Dragon Guardian
by Celianna
Summary: Lucy is a princess locked up in a castle. Oh, and there's a dragon guarding it. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Dragon Guardian**

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** Lucy is a princess locked up in a castle. Oh, and there's a dragon guarding it.

**A/N:** This is AU, and slightly based on The Dragon's Ward by Kieseru. I wanted to write my own version, taking a different direction. Other than the same premise, the two stories aren't alike. I was going to turn it into a very long one-shot, but I guess chapters are better.

* * *

Air.

Lucy needs air, desperately. She opens her mouth, breathing in, but nothing flows through her body—as if suddenly there's an invisible hand around her throat, choking her.

The man in dark long robes, tall of stature and clouded in mystery, simply smirks at her with glee. He's just finished chanting a strange spell in a language Lucy's never heard before, one that suddenly took her breath away. He seems to honestly enjoy the fact that Lucy is writhing on the floor, clutching at her pearly pink dress.

"Lucy!" he father yells, and rushes to her side.

Lucy's trying to gasp for breath, but no matter how hard the little ten year old tries, she doesn't feel any oxygen enter her lungs. There's so much air around her, but she feels as if she were drowning in an ocean.

"What ... what did you do to her!? You monster!" Her father yells at the mysterious man.

The dark robe rustles as the man takes a step forward, his face pulled in a hungry expression. It's an expression Lucy's never seen before, but eventually her eyes fall shut, having no more energy to keep them open.

"I'm going to make sure you will never have something precious again, so I took away her ability to live, just like you took away mine," says the man, his voice eerily calm. He chuckles arrogantly, now having the upper hand.

Lucy tries to open up her teary eyes to look at her father one last time—she's not going to make it, she can't breathe at all, and her consciousness is steadily slipping away. Her hand reaches out to him, desperate to touch him. Her father is about to grab her hand when the man interrupts.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he says with a tut. "This little girl will find out that the only way to live her life, is to get away from you. From anyone." The man then smiles, before he bows in front of the king, and disappears in a cloud of smoke.

Her father takes a step back, and Lucy mouths to him; don't go! Don't leave her alone! Her father is torn between wanting to grab her hand, and taking heed to the stranger's warning. So he takes another step back, and another, and suddenly Lucy can feel a little air filling her lungs again. She takes in a big heap of air, her eyes wide and unfocused, but only a little oxygen manages to enter, but it's enough to sit up straight on her own strength at least.

The king collapses on the floor."No ... my darling princess. It can't be ... you can't be cursed with the Dragon's Kiss ..."

Lucy Heartfilia, only ten years old, and she was the first person to have ever been cursed with the Dragon's Kiss. A curse that would have her gasping for air the same way a dragon gasps for fire if its fire is constricted or taken away.

**oOo**

Lucy decides she hates dragons, even if she's never seen one before in her life, but she hates it regardless. The Dragon's Kiss is an ancient curse, so ancient, it's only ever been written about, and no one had ever encountered a real life case of it. In fact, most people believed it to be a fairy tale, a fable, a myth—but Lucy's violent spasms as her lungs try to breathe air whenever someone gets near her are very real.

She can't be around another person anymore, anytime anyone was in her vicinity, she would close up and fall to the ground, gasping for air. Her father, the king, tried his best to lock her in a room and communicate with her through letters—but even the room was too small for her. Lucy literally felt like she was always treading between the line of consciousness and unconsciousness; it was a constant painful battle for her.

Eventually, her father couldn't take it anymore, and devised a plan. A plan to try and find out a way to break the curse, and simultaneously protect Lucy from humans that came too close to her. He sent Lucy away, far away from anyone else where no one could find her and cause her suffering, and that meant she was locked up in a castle hidden deep in a forest.

Oh, and there's a dragon guarding her castle.

Lucy doesn't know how, or when—she thought dragons were fairy tales as well—but her father managed to get her castle guarded by a dragon, since she can't be around other humans. If knights couldn't protect her, a dragon will do, her father had written to her. Why did it have to be a dragon? The one who bears the name of her curse? It just seems like a bad omen to her; getting protected from something that causes her pain ...

Lucy really doesn't like dragons. Not that she's seen it around.

She cried all night and day when she first got to the castle, locked up in her new bedroom, sobbing herself to sleep. She missed her father, she missed her friends, she missed having someone to talk to. She was alone, scared and angry. Alone because she couldn't see her family anymore. Scared because there's a dragon in the castle. Angry because the mysterious man cursed her when she had done nothing wrong.

What had she done to deserve this life? Locked up in a castle, guarded by a dragon she hasn't even seen?

**oOo**

It's the second day, and Lucy is in her bed, hiding underneath her blanket and silently crying. When suddenly, she hears a chime—a bell. A bell? She sits up straight, and immediately thinks it's her father. He's come to get her back!

"Daddy!" Lucy yells out and she gets out of her bed and runs towards her big wooden door to open it. But there's no one there. Her heart stings with pain and she starts sobbing again.

Why did he leave her here all alone? She just wants to go home!

Lucy is about to crawl back in her pink bed, when she notices something. It had already seemed odd to her when she first came inside of the bedroom, but there's a small indent in her wall. A big square made out of stones. At first she thought it was just an area to place candles, but instead of there being a candle, there's a plate with an apple on it.

Food.

Lucy doesn't know how it got there, but she refuses to touch it; she doesn't want to accept it. Because accepting the food meant accepting her new way of life, and anything but that. Lucy is sure her father will break the curse in no time, and come back to pick her up. So she hops back onto her bed and pulls the covers over her. Yes, daddy will come get her soon. She doesn't need to eat.

Even when her stomach growls loudly late at night; Lucy doesn't touch the apple. She stubbornly refuses to get out of bed.

But then one night turns into another, and one apple turns into two apples, three apples—until there's a bunch of fruit piled up in what Lucy has figured out, is a dumbwaiter. Where does the food come from anyway?

_The dragon,_ she thinks. It's the dragon that's giving her food, it couldn't be anyone else, because then Lucy would know; she'd stop breathing immediately. But how can a dragon even hold an apple? Aren't they big, body clad in scales and have big scary claws? Lucy squeezes her eyes shut and hides under the covers; she won't accept help from a scary dragon. Her father will pick her up soon. Soon.

However, no matter how many times poor little Lucy wished her father would pick her up, he never did. For three long days, Lucy had ignored any food sent up to her room, leaving it to rot and stench up the room that she refused to get out of. She was dehydrated and famished, it was painful, but not as painful as being so alone in this big castle with the thing she hates most guarding her. Eventually, Lucy is too malnourished to even move around, so on her fourth day, she collapses.

When she came to again, she was on her bed, and the scent of cooked food filled her nostrils. Suddenly it was the only thing her mind could think about; _food._

Little Lucy hops off the bed and rushes towards the table in the middle of her big room where she could smell the food coming from. The rotten fruit was gone, and instead there is a silver plate on her table; a steak. Hungrily, she grabs it with her hands—princess manners substituted for pure raw instinct—and scarves it down as fast as she can. The steak wasn't that great, it was actually both a little burned and undercooked at the same time, but Lucy at the moment, didn't care. It was food her body desperately needed.

That day, with tears in her eyes as she finished up her steak, Lucy accepted her fate and her imprisonment inside of this castle.

**oOo**

Three times a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Three times a day, the magical dumbwaiter would chime, alerting her that food had arrived. Lucy doesn't know how it works; food just magically appears on a silver plate in her wall. When she's done, she puts the empty plate back in the dumbwaiter and pushes a little button next to it, that makes it disappear. She guesses this is the only way she can be fed by the dragon, whose help she has begrudgingly accepted. She still doesn't like dragons though. Besides, this dragon can't even cook!

Half the food that's sent up to her room is burned, and the other half is undercooked. Even any vegetables she gets are not properly cooked or prepared. Then again, what does a dragon know about cooking human food ... maybe his big tail just gets in the way, or something. It still annoys Lucy though, especially when burnt food is sent up, then she has to skip a meal and hope the next one will be cooked better. She can't tell if the dragon is guarding her, or trying to kill her with raw chicken.

Speaking of this dragon—Lucy hasn't seen it. Not once. Not a single glimpse. How does one hide a huge dragon in the castle anyway? Lucy assumes it sleeps outside, but from her window, she sees nothing. Perhaps she needs to be a bit more adventurous and explore the castle.

So after a week of being locked up in her room, Lucy finally walks out of her bedroom.

She's a bit scared, preparing herself to walk right into a fireball, but there's no one in the hallway. It's so empty, her footsteps echo as far as the eye can see. It's actually kind of scary, so Lucy shrinks down her shoulders and holds her hands together, worried some monsters might be lurking around. She takes a tentative few steps, until she's brave enough to walk up straight. She comes across a big entrance room, with a grand staircase leading down to the first floor. Lucy's at the top of the stairs, looking down at the huge front door.

Freedom, she thinks.

Eager to go outside, Lucy rushes forward, only to hit her head on something invisible, and falls back on her butt with a painful yelp. Lucy rubs her forehead and glares at whatever blocked her way; but there's nothing to be seen.

"Huh?" she wonders out loud. She picks herself up and throws out her hands, and feels them touch something solid in front of her, but she can't see it. It's invisible.

"It's a barrier," she mutters to herself. A ... a barrier? To keep her locked in? This is insane!

Furious that she wasn't just stored away in a castle in the middle of nowhere, but that there was an actual barrier preventing her from leaving, angered her more than the Dragon's Kiss itself. Lucy desperately tries to find other ways to get down, but each hallway is eventually blocked by the invisible wall again, and when Lucy tries to open a window and climb out onto the railing outside, she's stopped yet again.

A prison. This castle is her prison, Lucy thinks. She can't even get down to the first floor; how is she going to stay sane if she can't even go outside and enjoy nature? It is already torture she hasn't spoken to anyone in a week—but now she can't even go outside! This is the worst.

When she's back in her room, ignoring her raw dinner (raw chicken is deadly, her mother had once told her), Lucy wonders if the reason she can't go to the first floor, is because the dragon sleeps there. But isn't the dragon supposed to protect her? Not that Lucy wants to see it anyway. He can keep the first floor, she'll stay up here, and perhaps read some books as she came across a library when she was trying to find an exit.

Lucy hurriedly goes back to the library, taking her time to explore it. It's rather large, but obviously not as big as the one she had back home—that one was her mother's pride. Tall wooden cases line up against the stone walls, filled with dusty books. Lucy smiles weakly, and trails her fingers across the spines of the old books. She's always liked to read, her mother taught her how to at a very early age, so she's read quite a few books. But these ones, she doesn't recognize any of these names, they're probably far too old for her to have read them. Lucy selects a random green book from one of the large bookshelves, then takes it back to her room where she reads it.

It's a fairy tale about a princess waiting for her prince to wake her up with her true love's first kiss. Lucy yawns and throws the book behind her bed; romance never interested in her. It had always been the adventure stories that got her attention. Besides, those stories are always so unrealistic. She's a princess—but she's definitely not waiting for some prince to come kiss her!

When she was nine, her father made her meet a bunch of older boys that were princes, as potential suitors. To Lucy, they were all stuck-up and didn't know how to have fun. Lucy liked playing with wooden swords, but the boys were more interested in lifting up her skirt. She hasn't got many good experiences with boys, and just like dragons, Lucy doesn't like them. For ten year old Lucy right now, romance is the furthest thing on her mind. She just wants to go home again and hug her father.

If only her mother were here, she would know what to do with the curse. Lucy fondly remembers how her mother practiced magic, a beautiful kind of magic that used keys to open doors to the most extravagant landscapes. Lucy was forbidden to enter through those doors, but how she longed to explore with her mother. Little Lucy wanted to be just like her when she grew up. It's still the saddest day in her life when her mother had mysteriously vanished. No one ever saw her again.

Lucy hopes her father won't disappear on her either; he's all she's got left. And now she can't even see him.

She silently cries herself to sleep that night.

**oOo**

It's been about three weeks now. Lucy is getting better, tougher, and she's crying less—but the loneliness remains as strong as ever. She's got no one to talk to but herself, so she's gotten into the habit of reading books out loud, simply to hear a person's voice. It's silly, but it makes her feel less lonely, as if she were reading it for someone else. She even sings some songs that her mother used to sing to her. Every night, before she goes to bed, she will sing a song about a knight who has bravely fought in the war, and is on his way home. He tills his wife to keep on waiting for him, and to not lose hope. Lucy tries not to lose hope herself either. She will wait, in this dragon guarded castle, for her father to return.

The castle itself has some very odd enchantments. Sometimes Lucy wonders if the furniture is alive, with the way they seem to move and disappear every once in a while. One time she swore she saw a goblet jump off from a table, and hop out of the room. The trees in the paintings on the wall seem to softly move in a breeze that isn't really there. Her closet seems to always have a new, magnificent dress in her size when she opens it up. Her bathroom has running hot water and her towels are always clean after she uses them. All the candles in the castle will dim when she goes to bed. Perhaps the castle knows when she goes to sleep?

It's a lot to get used to; Lucy doesn't have these kind of things at her own castle. She wonders if a clergy of wizards used to live here, and that they practiced their magic on anything they could find.

Lucy is kind of interested in learning magic as well.

The kind of magic she sees daily, is the dumbwaiter. Three times a day she gets a meal sent up to her room, though most of the time it's inedible. A couple of times, breakfast was skipped, which made Lucy very cranky as she was always up early in the morning. She wishes she knew who made the food. At first she thought it was the dragon, but that idea seems kind of farfetched. Maybe the castle makes it for her? It doesn't seem that crazy of an idea when entire rooms suddenly manage to disappear.

She hasn't yet decided whether or not she finds the castle creepy, or fascinating.

**oOo**

One day, Lucy hears a strange noise.

Having gotten used to the creaks the castle makes, she notices this is a sound she hasn't heard before. It's far in the distance, and it's a low kind of grumble—but it's definitely from inside the castle.

It's scary. What if it's a monster that came to eat her? Lucy quickly runs out of the library and hurries back to her room, wanting to hide under her blankets.

"Daddy, please come back soon," she whimpers.

As much as Lucy wants to put up a strong front and pretend to be alright, she's still a lost ten year old girl, all alone in an enchanted castle.

**oOo**

Lucy doubts there's really a dragon guarding her castle.

It's been well over two months now—Lucy's been entertaining herself by reading the books in the library—and not once has she seen it. She found a few books that had some information about dragons, and it had pictures in it. They were large, reptile-like, had scales covering their bodies, and a pair of huge scary looking wings was attached to its back. It said that dragons haven't been spotted since two centuries ago, on a peculiar day when all dragons mysteriously vanished.

So Lucy figures there's no way her father could have found a dragon for her. For one, they're pretty much extinct now, and two—they're way too big to be in the castle!

Which means ... she truly is alone, and Lucy doesn't like that thought.

She spends her time trying to fold a piece of paper (which she found in a drawer that had never-ending paper coming out of it) into the shape of a dragon, but fails miserably at it.

**oOo**

Then one day, it happens.

It had been such a long time since Lucy last felt it, that she had forgotten she even had it; the Dragon's Kiss. At first her throat felt kind of itchy, and she thought nothing of it, but then suddenly it was pinching closed—she could hardly breathe!

Lucy rolls out of her bed, clutching at her dry throat, trying to breathe. Why now? Why did it suddenly appear again? She staggers over to her window; there must be someone close by! Is it her father!? Hopeful that her father might have returned, Lucy tries to scan the area around the edge of the forest. Then she sees it; a man clad in rusted armour, holding up his sword in a defense position.

No, that's not her father, that's just some idiot who managed to stumble upon her castle.

The knight let out a battler roar and charged towards the castle. Lucy started gagging immediately. No! He can't come closer! It'll kill her! She gasps for breath, falling down to her knees and staring up at the blue sky, hoping that the man will leave. She wants to scream and tell him to go away, but her voice is lost—she's too busy trying to take in air that isn't filling her lungs. Lucy's eyelids begin to feel droopy, and just when she's about to lose consciousness, that's when she sees it; a large gust of flames bursting out into the sky.

Not a second later, Lucy takes in a rush of fresh air, and then another, until her breathing is back to normal again. Her heart is racing, and there's adrenaline pumping through her veins. She didn't think people would come out here, she thought she'd be safe, hidden away from society. Yet, someone managed to find the castle. Lucy hopes it was a poor lost knight, and not someone sent to come after her and kill her. That would be bad, very bad.

Though at least, Lucy now knows there really is a dragon guarding her. The worst part? He saved her.

"Thank you ... Mr. Dragon," she whispers.

Maybe just for today, she won't hate dragons.

**oOo**

Keeping track of time while being locked away isn't always easy. Sometimes Lucy even forgets what day it is, so a few weeks ago, she started using a calendar to keep track of time, to count all the lonely days.

It's been more than half a year since she last saw her father, and since she last talked to another human being.

Today is Lucy's birthday, she is now eleven years old. Sad, and angry that she's still in this dusty old castle, she sings her own birthday song in the library. There's sadness in her voice, and Lucy can't help but shed a few tears, that splatter on the pages of her book. She tells herself she's older now, and she should act more mature. There is no time for crying anymore. She should be strong, resilient—just like her mother. Except poor Lucy yearns for someone to talk to, someone to laugh with, it's hard to be strong when you're all alone.

This is Lucy's worst birthday.

She returns to her room, having finished singing her song, and not interested in reading for the moment. When she opens her door, a surprise awaits her. There, in the dumbwaiter, though oddly misshapen and toppling off to one side, is a plate with a pink cake on top. There are eleven lit candles stuck on top, as if someone roughly shoved them in, causing the pink icing to crumble apart. It looks terrible, so terrible that Lucy's laughing yet crying at the same time. She walks over to the dumbwaiter, brushing the tears out of her eyes, and letting out the strangest sounds that sound more like a combination of a whine and a hiccup.

It really is a cake. Lucy is positive it will taste as terrible as it looks, but the gesture warms her heart nonetheless. It's a little less lonely knowing someone thought of her, even if it is a dragon. She closes her eyes and blows out all of the candles, making a wish to be reunited with her father again. As Lucy eats the very, very sweet cake—it was like eating pure sugar—she folds her napkin into the shape of a heart, and writes down '_thank you_' on it. Lucy really is grateful for the cake, so she finishes the entire thing and sends the empty plate back down, along with her thank you note.

She wipes away the rest of her tears; no more crying. Starting from today, Lucy will be strong. If a _dragon_, of all things, can bake a cake, she can do anything as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dragon Guardian**

**A/N:** I'm notorious for writing stories with slow pacing (and also writing ... a lot), so beware new readers!

* * *

Ever since her birthday, Lucy has had the desire to see the dragon and thank him in person. It frustrates her that she isn't able to leave the second floor of the castle, so she could explore and find the dragon on her own.

Instead, she's always cooped up in the library, reading books to herself. Lately, she's been reading books about magic, though most of the time she doesn't know what it's talking about, as Lucy knows nothing about magic herself, and these books are pretty advanced. She also reads a romance novel every once in a while, indulging herself in this fantasy world where princesses get saved. She pretends to be those princesses, even if it's stupid, and she's still stuck in this castle, but as long as she's reading it, she can pretend.

Sometimes, she hears strange noises again, usually when she's in the library. At first Lucy had thought there was someone walking around in the castle, but she knows that would be impossible, as she'd have trouble breathing. Of course, this didn't make her worries go down, because then Lucy was imagining all kinds of awful monsters that were prowling around the castle, waiting to eat her. Lucy tells herself the only monster in the castle here is the dragon, and he protects her, and he won't let anything happen to her.

Well, she hopes. She certainly hopes he won't eat her. That would be awful!

Speaking of eating, lately, the meals have gotten better. By that, Lucy means the food isn't going to kill her if she eats it. It's still tasteless (seasoning is not a thing apparently) and tough, but it's not as burnt before, or undercooked. Lucy can tell the dragon is making an effort in improving, and that makes her smile.

Today, when she gets dinner sent up to her room—lately they've been arriving at the same exact time—it actually smells good for once. It makes her mouth water; it's been a long time that she's smelled good food. Hungry for a taste of this nice looking plate of food, Lucy digs in. The potatoes are crunchy, slightly undercooked still, but the poorly breaded piece of pork is actually alright. In fact, it has been her best meal yet. The fact that it is _edible_ means the food is already miles ahead of all the previous meals. Grateful that the dragon is putting in more effort, Lucy folds her napkin into another heart again, a soft smile on her lips as her fingers glide over the material. She sends the leftovers downstairs again, along with the heart.

The next day, Lucy is surprised to find something else amongst her meal.

Right next to her plate, where there used to be her napkin, is now a napkin folded into ... Lucy isn't quite sure, but judging by how it's got spikes jutting out, she will assume it's a poor attempt at a flower. She picks it up between her fingers and brings it closer to her face to study it.

"_This_ is a flower?" Lucy asks out loud, grinning at the deformed flower. It's so badly done, she can't help but like it. Just like the dragon's attempts at food, his attempts origami fail as well. Suddenly Lucy starts laughing, finding it too amusing, but she's also very touched at the gesture.

After finishing her meal (which wasn't that bad either!), Lucy puts the weird flower on a shelf in her room, next to a bunch of books. She looks at it and giggles again; it's so bad she can't help it.

"A flower from a dragon, who would have thought," she muses to herself.

Maybe—just _maybe_, dragons can be sweet.

**oOo**

Dragons are evil. Or at least, that's what all of the romance novels she's been reading seem to think so. She's found at least four books now, all about a princess locked away in a tower, being held captive by a dragon, and she needs a knight in shining silver armour to come save her. Then the dragon gets slayed, and everyone lives happily ever after.

It irritates Lucy more than it should; she doesn't need saving, and her dragon hasn't kidnapped her nor held her captive. In fact, he genuinely takes care of her. Besides, it was her father who put her here, and it was for her own safety. These romance novels have got it all wrong.

Not that she's saying that all dragons are good ... maybe some really are evil. Lucy only really knows the one living in her castle, and she hasn't ever seen it. But the dragon seems ... nice? Lucy still fondly remembers the birthday cake that was made for her, and the paper flower that's still sitting on her shelf months later. An evil dragon wouldn't do those things, he definitely wouldn't.

Those books are simply _wrong_ about dragons.

Lucy decides to start writing her own stories. Using a quill with a bottomless bottle of ink (seriously, almost everything is enchanted in this castle), she starts scribbling away. Being only eleven years old, her stories are simplistic, and about a princess being saved by a dragon. Lucy likes that much more; dragons saving princesses.

And he does, save her that is.

One random day, after spending a long time not being bothered by her curse, Lucy's throat closes up again. She immediately panics and rushes to a window to see who's there. She sees a glimpse of armour, hiding amongst the trees, and hears some screaming and battle roars. Her heart beats faster; what is this person doing here? It doesn't seem to be a knight from the castle, so it couldn't be her father. Then she sees a flame burst out in front of her window, and Lucy backs down, surprised, and still gagging, slowly suffocating.

"Die you evil dragon! I will save the princess!" Lucy hears someone yell out loud.

S-save her!? Kill the dragon!?

Lucy wants to yank open her window and give that knight a piece of her mind, but she's hyperventilating by now, and unable to say much of anything when she's trying to breathe. The dragon isn't harming her! That stupid moron of a knight is! Angered at someone attacking the dragon for the wrong reasons, Lucy does yank open her window, but instead of yelling at the knight, she throws one of her trashy romance novels towards him. The one about a knight saving a princess from a dragon.

It seemed to have been a pretty good throw, because the book bounces off of the helmet of the knight, and he's thrown off his balance, lowering his sword and looking up to see where it came from. Hah! That's what you get. Lucy fistpumps the air, but then collapses on the floor, her eyes shutting down.

She hears the dragon let out a loud roar—a sound she's only heard once before—and then the invisible hand grasping her throat is gone. Lucy inhales as much air as she possibly can, feeling dizzy from the rush of fresh air. She shakily stands up and looks outside; the knight is gone, though her book remains in the grass. There is no sight of the dragon. She slumps against the wall and sighs; how come that knight knew there was a princess in this castle? This doesn't bode well, what if more people knew where she was, and would go out to see her? That would be awful.

Mysteriously, her book ends up on her shelf again the next day. Lucy wonders how it got there; did it grow legs and walk back? She wouldn't put it past this enchanted castle.

Over the next few months, Lucy has seen five new knights already. Each heroically galloping in on their fancy horse, yelling out some kind of serenade, and proclaiming they're going to save the princess from the clutches of that wretched dragon. That wretched dragon burnt them all to a crisp—much like what he sometimes still does to her food. Lucy doesn't know how the dragon does it, but as soon as her throat closes up, the dragon is already defending the castle from any invaders. It never takes too long for the dragon to scare away the invader, and Lucy is grateful for that.

Given the amount of knights coming over to try and 'save' her, Lucy imagines there's some kind of rumour spreading around about her being locked up by a dragon. Those idiots all think this is some kind of fairy tale, but it's not! Lucy needs them to stay away, they're only hurting her even more if they come closer. She blames those books for making people believe dragons are evil, and all princesses need to be saved. Not all dragons are evil—hers isn't.

Then again, she still hasn't seen it either and can't even confirm if it is indeed, a dragon ... but it spews fire, so it must be, right?

One day, the knight of the week came a little _too_ close for comfort.

Lucy was lying down on her bed, comfortable and warm, reading the newest book she managed to find in the library, when it happened. Her throat closed up.

No big deal, no big deal, Lucy thinks to herself. The dragon will take care of it, he always does. With some difficulty, she swallows down some air, and tries to be as calm as possible; there's no need to freak out anymore when she knows it'll be over soon. Not a second later, she sees blazing fireballs appear in the sky like fireworks, and Lucy thinks to herself that she would really like to see some fireworks, and wonders if she ever will again. She returns to reading, holding in her breath to prevent herself from hyperventilating. Any moment now, and that knight will be running back into the woods where he came from.

Except, her throat is still itchy, and it's getting progressively worse. Lucy starts coughing, inhaling very little air; the knight is getting closer instead of backing away! What's going on outside? Lucy rolls off her bed and hops over to the window, but sees nothing; they were on the other side of the castle.

Suddenly, there's a huge bang echoing through the stone hallways, and Lucy almost jumps out of her skin when she hears it. She faintly walks out of her bedroom, unable to resist finding out what's going on, and why the dragon hadn't gotten rid of this pest yet. She stumbles out onto the hallway, slowly walking towards the grand staircase, all the while choking due to her throat being completely closed up. When she reaches the stairs, she sees that the huge wooden doors of the entrance are open.

And right there, in between the large doors, is a knight. He's got long blonde hair, and half his armour covered in black scorch marks. When he sees Lucy, he smiles with a brilliant white teeth. "Princess!" he calls out.

Lucy collapses to her knees. Go away! Go away you stupid idiot! He's killing her! Can't he see!?

The knight is about to take a step inside, when suddenly a huge wall of flames covers his entire body from behind, and Lucy's vision is clouded by black smoke. The smoke fills up the entrance hall, she can't see a thing, and while she's about to pass out, Lucy desperately fights to keep her eyes open—_she wants to see the dragon_. Now is her only chance!

Alas, the only thing Lucy gets to see, is a shadow moving amongst the dense smoke, before she passes out.

She wakes up at night, in her bed, still wearing her dress, and cold dinner waiting for her in the dumbwaiter. Lucy sighs as her hand travels up to her neck and touches it; that was a close call. No one's ever gotten inside yet, so it was scary to see the knight suddenly standing there. But on the other hand, Lucy is a bit happy seeing another human talk to her, even if he only called her princess. It's been so long since someone talked to her, Lucy craves human interaction, even if it's bad for her.

"I really wanted to see the dragon," Lucy says with a sigh and sinks into her pillow. She wonders what the dragon looks like. She imagines it to have green scales. Or perhaps red, or maybe even black ... Lucy smiles to herself; black would look kind of cool. Then again, it might not actually be all that big, which wouldn't look as cool. Maybe it's only a baby dragon, because no matter how Lucy looks at it, there's no way a real dragon could enter the castle. So it has to be small. Yes, a young dragon, short enough to fit through the entrance.

Then Lucy sits right back up with a jolt, eyes wide open as realization dawns on her.

The dragon! It was in her room. _She's_ in her room—why hadn't she noticed this before? She passed out in front of the grand stairs, there's no way she crawled back into her bed by herself. Someone had to have taken her there.

But how could a dragon do that ... ? Maybe the dragon knows magic ... ?

Lucy slaps her own forehead; of course dragons know magic, they already are _magical beings_ in the first place. And well, if this dragon can cook food, then it stands to reason, it can carry her to her room.

Lucy's curiosity is spiked; she _really_ wants to see it.

Trying to get her mind off of it, Lucy decides it's time to eat her cold dinner. It'd be rude to leave it sitting there. As she chews on the cold piece of pork, she realizes the food is even more tasteless when cold. It's definitely best to eat it fresh. Then she notices that her napkin is gone. But she doesn't need to look far; it's right on top of her glass, messily folded into the shape of a flower. It's a big improvement over the first flower, it looks a bit like a daisy, but it's still all crinkled and covered in grease stains. Yet, Lucy can't help but giggle as she takes it off of her glass and inspects it.

Yeah, the dragon has to have done it using magic. Anything this delicate couldn't be folded with big claws.

**oOo**

To distract herself from her loneliness and boredom, Lucy takes up on studying magic. There's so many books about magic in this library, it's not hard for Lucy to find a book to start with. She's interested in small spells, like fixing a hole in your dress, or one where she could perfectly tie up her long blonde hair in a ponytail. She knows these are very vain spells, but it's not like she dares to touch the ones that deal with powerful magic such as fire and ice. No, she'll leave that to the dragon. In the meantime, she'll try her best to learn magic.

Lucy would always sit near the biggest window in the library, liking the amount of sun she'd get as well as the great the view of the forest. She'd often daydream about getting out of the castle, and run straight into the forest, enjoying the feeling of her bare feet touching the grass, and hearing the rustle of the leaves. Just how much longer was she supposed to stay here?

Lucy would often write letters addressed to her father—some even to her mother—despite knowing she had no way of sending them. But it was nice to express her thoughts and feelings.

"Come back soon, daddy," she says to herself, staring out the window.

Before Lucy knows it, almost another year has passed. It was mostly dull and uneventful. A knight would pop up every now and then, trying to save Lucy from the dragon, but the dragon would always prevail. That's all the excitement Lucy would experience in her life in this castle—nothing else really happens, so Lucy came to treasure the mundane.

Mundane things such as being happy about getting a meal sent up to her room that wasn't horribly butchered. And every once in a while, the meal would include a trinket, usually a folded flower, but sometimes it would be an animal like a bird or a swan. They still weren't in the greatest shape—some of them had icky weird stuff on them or holes—but Lucy valued them nonetheless. She kept every single one that was given to her, her collection growing bigger as time passes on. It's a silly thing to do, but it keeps Lucy from going insane. It reminds her that she's still human, that she can still appreciate the little gifts given to her.

The one thing she's been looking forward to, is her birthday. Last year, she had gotten a pink cake, and it had given her a sense of safety and hope. It was comforting. So this year, Lucy really hopes there will be another one.

So on that day, twelve year old Lucy spends all of her time inside of her bedroom, reading through books as fast as she can, and she keeps looking up at the dumbwaiter to see if the cake has arrived yet. She's got a big goofy smile on her face, excited at what she'll be getting.

The dumbwaiter chimes, and Lucy springs out of her bed, immediately running towards the dumbwaiter, dodging a few piles of books here and there.

"Oh ... food," says Lucy dejected. It's her regular course; dinner. It smells kind of good though, so Lucy takes it. Maybe she'll get the cake later?

Lucy plays with her fork, not really feeling hungry, and simply continues to stare at the dumbwaiter. The dragon will make one for her ... right? It's the only thing she's got looking forward to when she's stuck in this hell hole ... don't take that away from her. Please bake her a cake for her birthday, Lucy might just crumble under the loneliness weighing down on her if no one ever thought of her on her birthday.

So she waits ... and hopes.

And waits some more, until the moon is high in the sky, and Lucy is pretty sure it's midnight.

The dumbwaiter never chimed.

Lucy didn't get her cake.

No one thought of her on her birthday. She was completely and utterly alone in this world.

Tears start welling up in her eyes, but Lucy fights them back. There's no time to be some kind of snot-nosed child, Lucy needs to accept that she just isn't important anymore, and no one will come and comfort her like her mother used to do. Birthdays ... don't mean anything anymore, because Lucy has no one around her that cares for her. Lucy wipes away her tears with her napkin.

_Chime._

Lucy's heart stops, and she tilts her head sideways, eyebrows arched in surprise. She turns to face the dumbwaiter, and lets out a sobbing squeal.

Inside of it is square cake. It's coated in pink icing—much better than the one from the previous year—and decorated with twelve small candles, all burning quietly. It's a bit lopsided, threatening to spill all over the floor if Lucy doesn't hurry up and take it up. So she runs over to it, feeling the rush of wind dry up her tears, and her hands reach for the plate, pulling it up slightly so that the cake doesn't fall apart.

Lucy hiccups, smiling broadly. "T-thank you," she says. "It's beautiful." It's the second ugliest cake Lucy's seen before in her life, but _she_ feels beautiful. Important. Alive. Even if it's just one person, or in this case, just one dragon, that's all Lucy needs. Just let her know she's still alive, that there's still someone out there that cares. Cares enough to give her a birthday cake.

Even if it was sent to her a few minutes past midnight.

**oOo**

"Okay, so twist your hand, flick your wrist, while holding out your index finger, and say; Marula." Lucy does the motions with her hand, pointing at the tinder in the fireplace. But nothing happens.

Lucy stomps her foot on the ground and lifts up her other hand, pushing her face so close inside of the book that it almost touches the pages. "What'd I do wrong? I followed the instructions!" Lucy complains.

She's been practicing this stupid incantation for a few hours now, and it's getting on her nerves that nothing is happening. She's found a small spell that would allow her to create a spark where ever she pointed her finger at. A spark is enough to burn the tinder and ignite her fireplace (it's getting colder nowadays as winter is coming). Except she can't get the damn flick in her wrist right! If only there were pictures ...

"Marula!" Lucy tries again and repeats the motions. Nothing happens. "Marula!" Still nothing. "Marula, marula, marula—why is it not working!?" Lucy angrily throws the book itself onto the pile of tinder and huffs at it. Then she points her finger at it, as if she were scolding a child. "Stupid spellbook, you don't even work! I wish I could 'marula' you instead. Hmpf."

Then Lucy hears a spark. She perks up her ears and inspects the fireplace; nothing but dry old tinder.

"What the ... did I just imagine it?" Lucy scratches her head, but then immediately pulls back her burned fingers. "Ah!" she cries in pain. The scent of burnt hair fills her nostrils all of the sudden.

F-f-f-fire ... ! Fire on her head!

"Oh my good lords—I AM GOING TO DIE! AAHH!" Lucy panics and starts running around in circles, which does nothing but add fuel to the small fire that's quickly burning her golden locks of hair.

What's the spell to make fire stop!? Why couldn't she have learned that one first!

Lucy's foot trips over the edge of the rug, and she lands face-down onto the floor. Right, roll, roll like your life depends on it! Lucy rolls and rolls and then gathers the entire rug together and puts it over her burning head.

There's a slight sizzle as the fire finally burns out, and now Lucy's sitting in the middle of the library with a rug on her head like a sultan. Her hair smells _awful_ and her head _hurts_ and her stupid spell _backfired_ and Lucy is _mad_, but most of all, she's just scared. She could have seriously hurt herself with this magic. Fire is not to be played with. Fire should be left to the dragons.

Lucy sniffs and combs her hair with her fingers, only to pull out large quantities of seared off hair. She looks at it in shock; her beautiful golden hair that's taken her years to grow long, are now all falling apart.

**oOo**

Fourteen year old Lucy, now with a pixie haircut, tries her hardest to practice the magic she learns from her books. She recites them daily, out loud, and will even sing with a melody. In fact, Lucy has noticed that she does much better with enchantments when she sings it, so now she's always coming up with a song to sing with the words.

She's learned a bunch of stuff already, she can now make a needle sew a hole, she can make a bottle pour water in a goblet, she can make a broom sweep away dirt; she can manipulate tons of mundane household equipment. Lucy hasn't tried that spark spell since the first time it worked and burned her hair, she has decided that kind of magic is too dangerous for her.

She really misses her long blonde hair ... but at least no one sees her in this castle. She feels pretty stupid with a boyish haircut like this. It'll take a few years for it to grow back to her shoulders at least. Then she gets an idea; what if there's a spell that makes hair grow faster? Brilliant! Lucy quickly starts searching through the library for any growth enchantments.

The last thing poor Lucy remembers from that day, is that she was being swallowed up by an avalanche of hair, that was spilling out through the doors and windows, and she was being wound up like a ball of yarn with her own hair.

But she was fine again the next day, sleeping on her bed, with short hair. Lucy almost believed the entire thing to be a weird dream, until she went back to the library but found the entrance was blocked by a vast amount of blonde hair. Yikes, that was definitely not a dream! And hey ... now that Lucy notices, the ends of her hair are singed. Did the dragon help her by burning off the absurd amount of hair growth ... ?

**oOo**

There's many things the dragon does for Lucy, except showing himself of course. After four years in this castle, the most she's seen of him are his blazing balls of fire, and a slight shadow moving amongst the smoke.

Even when he's out defending the castle from intruders, he's careful about his movements and never goes out into the open where Lucy could see him. It's a bit frustrating, honestly, because Lucy really wants to see him and thank him for all of the things he's done for her. Like protecting her from idiot knights (Lucy is pretty sure the tale of the princess being locked up by a dragon has spread around the country by now) or cooking her food.

Speaking of food, the dragon has gotten a lot better over the years. Rarely—if ever anymore—is it burned or undercooked. One particular day, Lucy's dinner looks a lot like the meals she got at the castle. It was a vibrant looking steak, medium rare, dotted with brushes of gravy, and sprinkled with green vegetables. It smelled _delicious_ and after tasting it, it really was delicious. So delicious Lucy took her time savouring the taste; it reminded her of home. Home she hasn't been to in four years.

Lucy quickly takes out a small paper from her nightstand, and writes down 'Thank you, what is your name?' on it. She puts it on top of her empty plate, and carries it on a tray back to the dumbwaiter. She has written several other messages to the dragon before, but never got an answer, so she won't expect this one to be any different, she's merely humouring herself. She takes the origami from the tray before she sends the dishes downstairs with the press of a button.

"This one's looking pretty," Lucy says out loud as she smiles at the fabulous looking rose in her hand. It's a red napkin folded into a blooming rose; the dragon has definitely been practicing these years, and Lucy has collected all of the ones he's given her so far. This rose origami might be the 50th, and Lucy places it on the shelf next to all of the other ones. As she looks from right to left, the origami starts out beautiful and clean, and increasingly loses its shape and finesse the more she looks back to the beginning. She giggled at the very first one; it still looks horrible, and has gotten a bit discoloured from being so old already, but it's probably Lucy's favourite one.

Yes, the dragon does many things for her. Being Lucy's only real form of interaction, even though it's indirect, she has grown kind of attached to him. No longer does Lucy hate dragons, even if it has the name of her curse—she's decided dragons are okay, and thoughtful, too. And maybe they're a little cool. Lucy is happy to know the dragon is strong enough to ward of all enemies that have appeared over the years. In a sense, she's gotten quite comfortable having the dragon protecting her. She feels ... safe.

The only thing Lucy writes nowadays, are stories with dragons in them. She's gotten a lot better at writing, but it's still not up to par with the literature that she regularly reads, and she doesn't hold a candle to her favourite authors. But, they're her stories, and she treasures them.

**oOo**

"Alice crept down the hole, slow and careful, as to not disturb the sleeping lion lying in her path. Each step felt heavy, as if Alice were treading through water. Closer and closer she snuck, until she was right in front of the lion's paw. The lion continued to sleep peacefully, unmoving and Alice sighed in relief. Then the front paw twitched, and twitched again and ... AIEEEH!"

Lucy abruptly stops talking and starts using her book to hit whatever had just flown right in her face. She's lashing out like a madwoman, scared of the unidentified bug, until she realizes it's just a butterfly who managed to fly in through the window. She calms down and puts her book on her lap with a sigh. Stupid butterfly, that really scared her!

Then another sound makes Lucy almost jump out of her skin again; a loud shattering noise. It sounded like glass, and it came from the hallway, behind the closed doors of the library.

Lucy's body stiffens up. Something broke, but it wasn't her doing.

"H-hello?" she calls out. She immediately feels stupid for doing so, knowing there's no one in the castle besides her and some reptile who never showed its face. She slides off from the armrest of the couch and carefully walks over to the large wooden doors. She pushes one open, her heart beating in her throat as if she's preparing for some monster to come jump out and attack her.

There is no monster waiting behind the door, but there is a broken vase on the floor.

Was there someone really there? Lucy looks towards the end of the hallway, for any signs of life, but everything is still and quiet. She scratches her head, then quickly sings a spell to make a broom clean up that mess. Perhaps she shouldn't think about this too deeply; the castle is enchanted after all, and it wouldn't be the first time that she's seen a vase miraculously change places.

It's just all in her head.

**oOo**

"Fourteen, fifteen ... and sixteen!" Lucy grinned at the amount of candles on her cake. She then closes her eyes and makes a wish. _I want to meet the dragon_, she thinks in her head, then breathes deeply before letting the air out in a burst, blowing out all of the candles.

Feeling good about today and herself, Lucy cuts into the two tiered cake. It's a deep pink, with red hearts scattered around on the sides, as well as other floral decorations, all edible of course. The dragon had truly outdone himself, Lucy's seen nothing like this before. Not even the chefs at her castle could have made something as extravagant and beautiful as this. Even the origami that was delivered with the cake was excellent; it was a dragon. A very detailed one that fit in the palm of her hand, with its wings perched up behind it. Lucy made it sit on top of the cake as she ate a slice with a big smile on her face.

This way, it feels like she's sharing her birthday with the dragon.

Lucy pokes the paper dragon with her fork. "Hi, I'm Lucy, what's your name?" The miniature dragon doesn't respond. "Won't say huh?" Lucy chews on her cake thoughtfully. "I know, I shall call you ... Draco." She giggles at the name, and at her own silliness for speaking to inanimate objects.

"This cake is delicious, it was made by another dragon, you know," Lucy says to the small dragon. She licks her fork to get all of the white cake crumbs and makes a satisfying sound. "At first I thought he was a scary dragon, but he's not at all." Lucy eats the last piece of her slice with a small smile. "He's not bad at all ..."

It takes Lucy a while to finish the entire cake—two days to be exact—and when she's ready to send the empty plate downstairs with the dumbwaiter, she realizes she's forgotten something.

"Oh shoot, I forgot to thank him for the cake!" Lucy usually writes a thank you note whenever the dragon bakes her a cake.

Quickly, Lucy gets out a note and scribbles down the words, and hastily goes back to her dumbwaiter and places it in the middle. She presses the button with a resounding nod of her head. There, she had to let the dragon know she was grateful, after all. In the blink of an eye, the note disappeared but was instead exchanged for something else entirely. Lucy hears something large hit the ceiling of the dumbwaiter, and then spills out in front of her, landing near her feet.

It's a face. A human face with emerald eyes mostly being hidden by pink hair, attached to a body that's still halfway trapped in the dumbwaiter.

The strange boy looks just as dumbfounded as Lucy feels.


	3. Chapter 3

**Dragon Guardian**

**A/N:** Happy's such a troll.

* * *

Lucy turns to stone.

"Ah ..." the boyish face says. His green eyes are wide and looking up at her.

Then Lucy finds her voice again, and she screams at the top of her lungs. "AAAAH!"

The boy's face screws into a grimace and screams in unison with her. "AAAH!"

"AAAAHH!" By pure instinct, Lucy kicks the face, hitting him right in the cheek, and he splutters out in pain and shock.

"AAhh! Ahhhh!" The boy picks himself up while rubbing his cheek, and hurries back into the dumbwaiter, swiftly pressing the button and suddenly he's gone again.

There's nothing there in the dumbwaiter, except for the note that she tried to send down.

Lucy's heart is beating a thousand miles per minute, as if it's having a mini marathon in her chest cavity. She feels faint, so Lucy sinks through her knees and rests on the stone floor, staring at the dumbwaiter in front of her. The adrenaline in her body won't let her mind calm down, and her thoughts are racing, coming up with a thousand questions. What ... what just happened? That was a boy. A human. Lucy's fingers touch her throat; it doesn't sting nor burn. She can still breathe. That was a human _boy_ and she didn't feel the Dragon's Kiss take away her breath.

That's not possible.

It's also not possible for there to be a boy in this castle.

Lucy's legs suddenly regain their strength and she pushes herself off the floor, standing up straight, still completely bewildered. There's someone in her castle—a boy. A boy who knew how the dumbwaiter worked, and a boy that had no affect on her breath. He has to still be in here, he has to be in the kitchen, Lucy _has_ to talk to him. So she grabs her dress in her hands and raises it above her knees so she can rush out of her room, towards the grand staircase.

There's no one there, and the staircase looks exactly like it did yesterday. Lucy stands at the edge, as far as the barrier allows her. She swallows, putting a hand over her heart and feeling it beat like crazy.

"C-come out!" her voice squeaks embarrassingly. Lucy finds herself turning red, and she tries again, raising her voice. "I know you're there!" He couldn't have gone far, she literally saw him only a minute ago. "Hello! I ... I'm sorry for kicking you in the face!" It honestly was an accident, it was complete instinct that took over and made her kick the strange boy in her room. But what if her instincts were right? What if he was a threat?

This time, cold sweat breaks out on her forehead. What if this boy was sent here to kill her? No, if he wanted to kill her, he could have done so when he first appeared, instead he ran away like he was scared of her. And the dragon would have taken care of the threat as well, but maybe the dragon didn't notice, maybe the boy slipped into the castle as it wasn't watching ... Then again, he appeared in the dumbwaiter, so he must have been in the kitchen before ... Lucy had no idea that the dumbwaiter was a two-way portal, transferring over whatever was in the dumbwaiter and exchanging places with it. So he must have been in there, unaware. Maybe he tried to take out the dishes of her old cake? Maybe he was a servant boy working in the kitchen? But Lucy wasn't aware of there being staff in the castle, especially since she couldn't tolerate being around humans.

But she did tolerate _him_. Does that mean her curse is broken ... ?

"Is ... is my curse gone? I-I could, I mean—I _can_ still breathe. That means something, I know it does. Please show yourself! I have to talk to you!" Lucy desperately calls out.

It's all too much on her mind. She hasn't spoken to another human being in _six years_, this is the first time in a very long time that she's been so up close to another person. She craves human interaction. She craves human touch, a handshake, a pat on the back, a hug—anything! So please ... boy, whoever you are, please come out. Lucy has to talk to him. She has to. She has to find answers.

"Please!" she tries once more and bangs her hands on the invisible barrier. "I beg of you ... I need to see you again. If you're in this castle, you must know who I am, and what terrible curse I am under! So I need to speak with you ... please." Lucy slumps down against the barrier, shaking too much to continue and stand up straight. It's too much for her body to handle.

"Don't leave me alone," Lucy says in a much softer and trembling voice. She's about to burst out into tears like this. For the first time in six years, she sees another person that isn't triggering her curse, and now he's gone, vanished. He won't even talk to her. Won't even grant the satisfaction of human company for a measly few seconds to answer her. "Come back," Lucy says weakly. She bangs against the barrier one more time, but it doesn't budge. Of course it doesn't; it's magic. Strong magic meant to keep her trapped up on the second floor, and away from everybody else, including the mysterious boy that may or may not still be in her castle.

What if her curse had been broken, but no one knew about it? Then no one would come pick her up and remove these barriers in the castle to set her free. That would be a terrible, terrible fate, and Lucy has already waited for so long ... she can't give up now.

Lucy picks herself up, determined to yell at the top of her lungs and scream until someone will finally answer her. She opens her mouth and squeezes her eyes shut and prepares herself.

And then suddenly she coughs; her throat is burning. It's tightening super fast.

No ... no it can't be. Lucy starts to gag—it's the Dragon's Kiss.

Is it the boy!? Is it someone else!? Who is it!

Frantically she looks around for any signs of life, but sees none. Did the curse break or not? Is it the boy that's causing it to trigger? ... What is going on!? Lucy weakly falls back down again, crawling across the floor as her mind starts to go numb from lack of oxygen. Whoever is there, they must be really close, because Lucy can barely hold on. In fact, in a few more seconds, she'll pass out. No, things can't end here! She has to speak to that boy, she has so many questions!

Lucy hears the doors of the castle open up, but only has half the mind to pay attention to it, she's quickly losing consciousness and is hanging onto her last breath. She hears screaming, and a ruckus breaks out, she even remembers flames, but then everything goes dark for her.

**oOo**

Lucy stirs. Something's poking her side, and it's annoying her. She tries to open up her eyes, but finds it hard to do. Her entire body feels exhausted and limp, like the life had been sucked right out of her. She feels uncomfortable lying on the stone floor, but can't seem to move a finger.

"She's really out cold ... what do we do?" she hears a high pitched voice say.

Wait—people? There are people in her castle? Or is this just a dream? Come on Lucy, open those eyes! Why do they feel so heavy all of the sudden? Lucy concentrates on getting her body to listen to her, but it doesn't, it's like she's paralyzed.

"Is she even breathing?"

"Aye. She is."

Wait ... she _is_ still breathing, yet those are definitely voices Lucy is hearing, it's not simply in her head, and it's making her heart beat like a drum in response. People! Real life people that are talking! And she's not gagging for breath! What is this? Is her curse really broken? Lucy would have hugged them both out of joy, if it weren't for the fact she still can't even open her eyes. What's wrong with her? Why _now?_ Lucy tries to give herself a small peptalk, encouraging her body to open her eyes.

"She's too stubborn, if she'd stayed in her room, she wouldn't have gotten so close and passed out. Now I have to carry her ass back to her room again!"

Whose ass is that person talking about here!? Lucy suddenly feels offended.

"Aye. She's been getting heavier lately."

T-that's just her breasts growing a few cup sizes! Her weight is perfectly fine! Exactly what are these two talking about!? Lucy wishes she could give her a piece of her mind; just because she hasn't spoken to humans in years, doesn't mean she'll tolerate asshole comments about her weight.

"But what do we do? She saw you ..."

"I don't know ... we just won't tell anyone? Maybe she'll think it's all just a dream and forget about it."

Lucy wants to open her eyes and yell out; I'm awake! But she can't. There's no energy left in her body, and she feels completely limp, it's all she can do to continue breathing on her own. Is she really dreaming right now? Or are those really two voices she's hearing? Human voices she hasn't heard in so long ...

"Aye, we can do that. But if someone finds out, I'm telling on you."

"That ain't cool! Whose side are you on here!?"

"The one that won't kill me!"

"I'm going to kill you if you do that!"

Lucy suddenly wishes—completely against what she's been wishing for these past few years—that these two knuckleheads would shut up, and get her something to drink, because her throat feels so dry.

Her heart almost bursts out of her chest when she feels something slip around her body. It's warm, it feels like skin—they're someone's arms. Wrapping around her gently and carefully, pulling her up from the ground and up in their arms, against their very warm chest. Lucy hasn't felt the touch of another human being in so long, she starts shaking from the sensation. It feels good, it's everything she's been wanting, another person holding her and protecting her. Just like her mom and dad would do.

"She's shaking ... I think we broke her."

"She's not broken ... I think." Lucy feels the voice beat against her ears as it travels down the person's chest. It feels like a strong voice, a comforting voice. Is this really happening? Is she really being held in someone's arms right now? Or is this really all a dream?

"What if she is?"

"I don't know, we unbreak her?"

"How? Stick a bandage on her?"

"Maybe. Haha!"

Lucy feels herself being carried along by this person with the comforting voice, her body swaying in his arms with each step he takes. Yes, this has got to be a dream. There's no way someone would be in her castle, holding her like this, and isn't triggering her curse. Even so, it's still a very nice dream, Lucy wishes she could sleep forever to savour the feeling of being held again in another person's arms. She rubs her cheek against his chest; the only thing she seems to be capable of doing right now, the rest of her body won't listen.

"She totally kicked you in the face. You must have really scared her with that face of yours!"

"I didn't scare her with my face!"

Ah, so this is the boy she saw earlier? Now she's dreaming about him already.

"You've still got a footprint imprinted in your cheek!"

"Yeah, so! She didn't kick me because of my face. I don't look scary or anything."

"But she _did_ kick you when she saw you."

"Ugh, just shut up. That wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen!"

Suddenly she feels the person pull her body closer to him, and his back is hunched over her, making her feel his body heat even more. He speaks in a husky low voice. "Sorry about that, and all, I usually catch them straight away, but you were kind of distracting me, yelling and stuff. You looked like you were about to cry, too. That's just not fair man, not fair. I mean I have ..."

"Natsu who are you talking to?"

Natsu? Is that the boy's name? Like the summer? He feels like summer to her; warm and comfy, like the sun shining on her face.

"N-no one! I'm just ... talking out loud. Yeah. Shut up, why don't you go downstairs and go prep some food, huh?"

"Aye, whatever you say boss. Don't let her see you again."

"Yeah yeah, I got it!"

Lucy inhales this person's scent. It smells like a combination of cooking spices, as well as burned leather. What a strange thing to smell like, but she's not going to question it when Lucy can simply enjoy being held like this. Except it doesn't take long before she feels her body being lowered down, until her back sinks into her fluffy mattress, and the warm arms disappear from her body. No ... don't leave her now, stay—please stay. Stay as long as the dream lasts.

"I really messed up this time." Suddenly there's an extra weight on her mattress, and her body slowly inclines towards it. It seems this person sat down next to her. "I won't let that happen anymore ... I'll kick their asses extra hard next time. I was just kinda distracted—that's all! So uhm, stay here. Just like that. And uh, you never saw me. Nope. Not at all."

Then the weight on her mattress disappears, and the voice no longer speaks up—he's gone.

Lucy is all alone again.

**oOo**

Lucy is pretty sure it had all been a dream. There's no way she saw a boy in her castle, much less have him carry her back to her bedroom. It was all just a dream. A very vivid and nice one, but a dream nonetheless. She feels silly for believing it to be real for a second. Lucy is still under the Dragon's Kiss curse, and shouldn't be able to breathe with people near her, so there's no way this could have been real. Maybe she's just been reading too many romance novels, or been writing her own story too much, that she started to have vivid dreams about it. She can still recall with perfectly clarity how those dark eyes looked back at her, and how those warm arms felt around her.

She sighs; she's fantasizing isn't she? Conjuring up some boy that held her in his arms ... it's stupid. Lucy feels stupid, and embarrassed, too.

Going back to her old routine is probably the best idea right now. Lucy needs to stop thinking there's some boy in her castle, when there's not. Only the dragon is here with her.

Yes, only Lucy and the dragon. Oh, and Draco, too. But that's it!

Lucy goes to the library to take her mind off of it, reading a new book about healing magic. That would always come in handy, she thinks. Except the material is hard to understand, using techniques Lucy hasn't read about yet, so she gives up in frustration, throwing the book behind herself.

"Ow!"

Lucy backs away immediately, eyes flying wide open and turning around in surprise. Was someone there? She looks at the window, but she sees nothing out of the ordinary; her book is lying open on the window sill.

"Is ... someone there?" she asks out loud, feeling kind of stupid, but she definitely heard someone wince in pain!

Suddenly a rush of wind whizzes past her, making her skirt fly up, and the little ball of air escapes through the doors, slamming it shut behind. Lucy is too stunned to move. She pinches her skin to see if she isn't dreaming. She's not.

What in the world was that? Is it another one of those weird enchantments from the castle? Like the invisible barrier? Maybe ... yesterday wasn't a dream. Holding onto that hope, that everything had been real, that Lucy really did meet another person, she dashes out of the library, hoping to catch the odd ball of air. She sees there's a bunch of vases knocked over in the hallway; like somebody was in a rush. There's definitely someone there!

"I know you're there!" Lucy yells out. "You can't hide anymore!" She runs on her bare feet, almost slipping due to the polished stone floor, but is steadfast and determined to find out who or what that was.

She comes across the grand staircase again, out of breath from running so much, and looks down.

The boy looks up.

Lucy gasps.

"Oh crap," the boy says.

Suddenly a blue winged animal appears out of nowhere, sitting on top of the boy's head. "Run!" it says. The boy disappears from the entrance in a lightning fast reaction, and all Lucy could see was a pink blur.

It wasn't a dream. It was never a dream. It was real—the boy is real. Lucy is too shocked for words, completely speechless and motionless. Her breath is irregular and fast, and Lucy's got a thousand questions racing through her mind, none of which are making much sense at all. But there's one thing that's crystal clear in her mind; it's that she needs to speak with this boy.

"Natsu!" Lucy calls out, remembering his name from yesterday.

No answer. Nothing. The boy doesn't come back.

What now? It seems he obviously doesn't want to speak to her. But Lucy recalls the boy's conversation from yesterday, the boy was talking as if he was taking care of her, almost like he was protecting her from any invaders. That means he works here in this castle! Maybe her father found a person who wouldn't trigger her curse? That had to be it, there's no other logical conclusion Lucy can think of.

"I want to talk to you!" Lucy yells. More like, Lucy feels an unmistakable _need_ to talk to him, it's like he's been that one glimmer of hope in all those six years that she hasn't spoken to anyone else.

Lucy stands on top of the staircase, looking down for any sort of sign, any movement whatsoever. A second turns into a minute, and a minute turns into ten minutes. He's not coming back, not on his own accord. Wait—what if he only comes when she's passed out? Maybe it was never the dragon that brought her back inside of her bedroom, but this boy instead. That would make a lot of sense. That also means if Lucy pretends to faint right now, he'd come and get her, right? Well, it's worth a shot, she thinks.

Okay, time to show how much of an actress she is.

Lucy clears her throat before she clasps her fingers around it, pretending to be choking again. She gags loudly and dramatically, spinning around on her heel, trying to make a show out of it. After ten seconds of this display, she drops stone cold on the floor.

... And hits her nose painfully against the stones. Ouch. She didn't think that one through. But Lucy has to be diligent now, she can't move a muscle, lest the boy realizes she's faking it.

Anticipation brews in her stomach, and her ears are alert to any noise she might eventually hear. He's got to come, if Lucy is right about him bringing her back to her room each time, he can't ignore her now. He has to ... he just has to! And so, Lucy lies on the floor for a torturous five hours straight. She knows it's dark outside, and she's probably missed dinner, but she hasn't moved from her spot. Except the boy still hasn't shown himself, maybe Lucy is wrong. Maybe he knows. Or maybe it was never him in the first place, but he did bring her back yesterday! She didn't dream that part, definitely didn't.

Come on stupid boy ... Lucy really needs to pee and this floor is super uncomfortable!

It's taking so long for anyone to come get her, that Lucy ends up dozing off.

She doesn't know how long she was out, but Lucy does know that the moment she wakes up again, she's in someone's arms. Her heartbeat quickens, and she holds in a breath. She's being carried! Her scheme worked! She's so happy, she could positively die in his arms right now.

"This is all your fault, Happy."

"No it wasn't! She hit me with a book!"

Two voices again ... Lucy resists the urge to squeal and hug whoever is holding her. Are these the same ones from yesterday?

"Exactly, you shouldn't have been there! Always sneaking off to pester her ... that's how we get into trouble. Now she's seen me twice ... the king's going to kill me!"

The king? Her father! Lucy wants to open up her eyes right now and surprise them, but she figures it's better if she can get them in her bedroom—she knows a spell that can lock her door—so they won't be able to escape again. So she patiently pretends to be asleep in his arms. Arms that feel as warm and strong as yesterday, Lucy feels herself simply melt with satisfaction.

"Don't you think it's kinda strange though?"

"Hm, what?"

"There was no one outside, but she fainted anyway."

"Yeah, I checked and checked, no one was there. Maybe they ran off? Hah, wait, maybe word's finally gotten out that there's a really super cool dragon guarding this place, and no one dares to come near!"

"You're not nearly as cool as you think you are."

"As soon as my hands are empty, I'm going to hit you over the head."

"Aiee, I resent violence! I've already gotten hit in the head today!"

"It grows character!"

Lucy can't help but smile. These two guys bickering with each other is actually really funny to listen to. Or well, it could also be the fact that Lucy hasn't heard a conversation in like, years, so she's overjoyed at hearing people talk around her again. It's interesting to hear that these two know of the dragon.

"But what are we going to do though ... I messed up so bad. She wasn't supposed to see me at all!"

"Maybe if we knock her over the head real hard, we'll knock those memories right outta her."

What, no! Don't hit her! Lucy furrows her brow and pouts. If anyone dares touch her inappropriately, she will ... she will set their hair on fire!

"Heh, you might be onto something there."

What—the boy thinks that's a good idea as well? Lucy is now worried for her safety, maybe it wasn't a good idea to pretend to have passed out ... now they're debating whether or not to give her amnesia. Are they really that worried about the fact that she's seen them? This boy, Natsu, seems to think her father will kill him for it. She wonders why that is. She'll have to interrogate him once he gets in her room. Lucy hears a door being opened, and she's pretty sure that's her bedroom. That was fast. Okay, now all she has to do, is quickly lock her door with a magic spell once he puts her down on her bed. Lucy can feel her skin crawl with anxiety, she doesn't know how this will end, but she'll get answers eventually, no matter how much effort it will take.

"Happy, get the food out," says the boy in a much less joke-like voice he's been using all this time.

"Aye."

Lucy feels herself being lowered, and she braces herself; it's time! Just as the boy's arms pull away from her body, Lucy's eyes pop open, coming face to face to those dark green eyes again, and her hand shoots out to grab the boy's wrist. He looks at her, completely dumbfounded and caught off guard. Lucy smirks, then looks at her door and flicks her wrist.

"_Eronium lock-on!_" she yells. Her door slams shut with a bang, and she could hear the lock turn over.

The boy tugs his arm back, but Lucy tightens her grip. "I got you now."

"H-Happy, it's a trap!" the boy says out loud. "Run!"

"Aye!" Lucy sees the strange blue animal again, this time spreading its white wings, and soaring fast towards her window.

"Not if I can help it!" Lucy warns, and beckons at the window with the same movements from before, quickly saying the magic words, and the window closes promptly. The animal crashes against the window, head first, and its limp body falls down. "Oh oops," Lucy says and winces. "Sorry! I just ... I just want to talk!"

Finally, the boy yanks his wrist out of her grip and jumps back, growling at her, like he was some kind of wild animal. He almost looks like he's frightened at the sight of her. Lucy gets off from her bed and moves closer to him. "Please, I just wanted to talk ... I know your name is Natsu."

Natsu whips his head back and forth, looking for any exits, with sweat appearing on his forehead. Wow, he really doesn't want to be in the same room as her, does he? That kind of hurts Lucy's feelings. "Happy ... what do I do, what do I do!" he says in a panicked voice. "She knows my name!"

Lucy takes another step forward, and Natsu visibly flinches. She almost feel like she's some kind of animal stalking closer to its prey. This is absurd. There's no reason why he should be having this reaction, Lucy only wants to talk! Is that too much to ask for? Being trapped in this god forsaken castle for six damn years, and not once did she have the luxury of talking to another human being, and now her one and only chance seems to act like a frightened little bunny, looking for a way to escape.

"Don't leave, please, I haven't ... I haven't ... in six years ... not once—_sniff_—not once! I was so ... so ... wahh ..." Lucy's sobbing by now, all of her anger, resentment, sadness and hatred towards everything that has happened to her started pouring out in the form of tears. "It's not fair, i-it's not fair at all!" she continues to say, trying to catch her tears with the cuffs of her dress. "I just wanted to ... wahh ... w-wanted someone to t-talk to!" She starts wailing by now, hiccupping and sniffing and wheezing; she's a complete and utter mess.

"You made her cry," says the high pitched voice from before, right behind her.

"No I did not!" says Natsu incredulously. "She just ... did it all on her own. What do I do, how do I make it stop!?"

"I don't know, try pulling her hair."

"Nooo, don't pull my hair," Lucy says through her sobbing. "I'm just ... just ..." She then leaps forwards, crashing her face against the boy's chest to muffle her sobs. Her hands are pressed up against his chest as well, at which point she finally notices this guy isn't really wearing a shirt, simply a black vest. But right now, Lucy doesn't care how inappropriate she's being, how her face is pressed into his warm skin. Her rationale has long shattered by now, and all she needs is someone to hug her, comfort her. What she's been missing for these six long years.

"I uhh ..." Natsu says awkwardly. "Do you need a tissue or somethin'?" he asks, completely unhelpful. Lucy simply continues to cry in his chest. "... Guess not."

"Pull her hair, it'll work!" says the other one.

"Happy shut up!" Lucy can feel Natsu's stiff frame against her, with his arms awkwardly hovering next to her waist, like he isn't sure what to do with them. "Uhm, then uhh ..." Then he raises his hand, and gracelessly pats her on the back with the finesse of a bumbling elephant. "There, there?" he says in a sort of question.

"I still think you should pull her hair. She seemed to like that last time."

"I-I didn't pull her hair!" Natsu quickly splutters as he pats Lucy even harder on her back, causing her to let out a small hiccup.

"Okay, then put your arms around her."

"What, why!?"

Lucy mumbles, "Idiot. Y-you're a real idiot." It's all she needs; a warm hug from another person. Warmth she hasn't known for years, and this person feels _so warm._

"F-fine!" Lucy can hear the boy huff out loud, before he awkwardly places his arms around her, as if he's never hugged someone else before. He squeezes his arms hard against her frame, keeping her trapped against his chest, and he's kind of suffocating her. And even with the awkwardness of this stranger holding her, Lucy can't help but feel herself give into the warmth he provides. She's completely unwinds in his awkward embrace, leaning her ear right against his chest and listening to his heartbeat. Lucy whimpers softly and lets her own arms drop and wrap around his waist in return, completely ignoring her proper princess etiquette. She's never hugged a stranger before, but she really needed this. She's needed this for so long. Questions can come later, just let her stay like this for a little while longer, in the arms of a young man.

A few seconds later, she hears Natsu's voice again. "Did you stop crying already?" Natsu asks carefully. Lucy steps on his foot. "Okay, okay, I won't say a thing!" Natsu says. Then he lowers his voice into a whisper, "Happy, how long do you think she's gonna be like this?"

"Aye, good question. I reckon an hour!"

"Ugh ..."

Lucy stirs. "... cy."

"Huh, _cy?_ Did you say something?" Natsu asks.

"My name's Lucy," Lucy murmurs against his chest.

"Ah ..." Natsu's arms around her finally loosen their death grip on her. "Yeah, I know." His hand on her lower back slowly strokes up and down, giving Lucy warm shivers. "I'm Natsu."

Lucy smiles weakly and wipes her tears off on his vest. "Yeah, I know," she says, repeating his own words.

"And I'm Happy!" says the other one enthusiastically.

Lucy finally pushes herself away from Natsu's broad chest when her sobs have subdued. She quickly cleans up her face from any tears or snot before she looks up at him, studying his features. Now that she's up close, she can see he's got a pretty boyish face—he seems to be around her age—and a healthy dose of short pink hair. She's never seen anyone before with pink hair. His most prominent feature though, even more noticeable than his pink hair, is the radiant grin on his face. It's so wide, so carefree, so friendly, it makes Lucy want to grin too.

"Do you ... do you two live here?" Lucy asks. She doesn't remove her arms from his waist, and neither does Natsu remove his.

"Uh ..." Natsu looks over her shoulder, at Happy. "... Can we tell her? I mean, she wasn't even supposed to see us, much less ask questions, I haven't been prepared for this!"

"I don't see why not ... she already knows about us, what more can go wrong?" Happy says. "But you didn't hear that from me!"

"I won't tell anyone I saw you," Lucy promptly says, hoping she can set them at ease and coax out more answers.

"Then I guess it's fine ..." Natsu trails off. "And yeah, of course we live here." He smiles at her, and Lucy smiles back. He seems pretty friendly. A bit clueless and naïve, but friendly.

"Thank you Natsu," Lucy says.

Natsu raises his eyebrows. "Huh, for what?"

"For letting me hug you. I know it's really inappropriate for a princess, and I shouldn't have done it ..." As Lucy says this, she pulls away from him completely, already missing the warmth from his body. Are all boys as warm as him? It's comforting. "So, thank you."

"Y-you don't have to thank me for it. I'm just glad you stopped crying. I hate it when you do that, makes me feel helpless," says Natsu.

It's Lucy's turn to look confused. "You make it sound like you've seen me crying before."

"Ah!" Natsu suddenly looks panicked. "Crap. I mean. No, I haven't—no wait, I did. Yes. No. I mean—Happy help me out here!"

Lucy almost yelps out loud when she sees a blue cat tug at her dress, standing on its hind legs and looking up at her with big eyes. His wings on his back are suddenly gone. "What Natsu's saying, is that he really hates to see you cry. He always thinks it's his fault."

"D-don't say that, that's not helping me out here man!" Natsu says with pink cheeks.

"Just how long have you two been living here?" Lucy asks, feeling suspicious.

Natsu scratches the back of his head, looking bashful all of the sudden. "As long as you have ... ?"

"Huh," says Lucy out loud. They've been living here for as long as she has? That means they had been there since the beginning. And she never noticed before ... she never felt her throat well up because of it, and even now, when she's standing directly in front of another boy, she can breathe quite normally. "Why can I breathe around you?" she decides to ask.

Natsu looks at Happy, and Happy looks at Natsu, both shrugging.

"Well silly, that's because we aren't human!" says Happy, like it's the most obvious answer in the world.

"I know _you_ aren't," says Lucy, eyeing the weird cat creature. "But you ..." She looks at Natsu, searching his eyes for an answer.

"Oh, me? Haha, I guess it I haven't really properly introduced myself," he says with a chuckle. "I'm Natsu Dragneel." He then dramatically bows in front of her. "Your dragon guardian, at your service."

Lucy splutters in disbelief.


	4. Chapter 4

**Dragon Guardian**

**A/N:** I forgot what it's like to actually get reviews on a story, haha! I tend to write lots of fic for an obscure pairing that really only gets one or two reviews. Anyways, expect slower updates now, I really need to focus on work instead of writing fic.

* * *

Lucy laughs. "You're not a dragon!" Does he think she's blind or something? Obviously he's just a boy.

Natsu shrinks back, and cocks his head to the side. "Of course I am! Who do you think kicked knight-butt all these years!?"

Lucy throws her hands up in the air. "The dragon! You know, big huge reptile, covered in scales, has huge claws, pointy wings and ... and a tail!"

"Not all dragons look like that!" says Natsu. "Right Happy?"

"Aye!"

"But no one's even seen a dragon in _centuries_. There's no way they look like _you_. You're a strange one."

"I don't think I'm strange, do you think I'm strange, Happy?"

"A little bit sometimes ... OUCH! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! You're not strange at all!" Happy shields his head for anymore incoming blows, staring warily at Natsu.

"Yeah, I'm not strange at all! There's loads of dragons like me where I come from," Natsu boasts happily.

"... Really," says Lucy, with a deadpan tone. She doesn't believe him one bit. Who does he think she is? Some ignorant little princess that doesn't know anything about the real world? Well, she's been cooped up for six years in this castle, and has gathered quite the amount of knowledge from all these books in her library. Among them, was a book about dragons, and it definitely said they hadn't been spotted in over two hundred years. And they definitely do not look like young men.

"Yeah, I'm not strange at all! You're the strange one."

"Aye, she is quite strange."

Lucy feels her cheeks heat up. "I ... I am not strange at all! I'm a perfectly normal girl," she says defensively.

"Normal girls don't get swallowed up by their own hair," says Happy while trying to control his laughter.

"Haha, that's definitely true!" Natsu agrees, and he laughs shamelessly.

"T-that ... how do you know about that!" Lucy demands, now feeling completely embarrassed that there was a boy who knew of her embarrassing failures. She was going to keep that a secret from everyone, but someone actually already knows!

"Happy tends to keep an eye out for you ... so we pretty much know everything," says Natsu.

Lucy suddenly covers her chest with her arms, feeling exposed. All these years she'd thought she was alone, but now comes to find out that there were actually others in the castle (aside from the dragon), and they were watching her? During all of her private and embarrassing moments as well? "W-what do you mean by that, k-keeping an eye on me?"

Happy suddenly tugs on her dress, forcing her to look down and acknowledge him. "Look, look." So Lucy looks at him, and suddenly he's gone. She shrieks in response, but then he reappears right next to her again; he hasn't moved from the spot. "Scared yah, didn't I?" Happy says with a grin.

"You ... can turn invisible?"

"Aye!"

Lucy lowers her eyebrows at him. "... Are you the one who kept knocking things over and breaking them in the castle?" Actually, now that she really thinks about it, lots of strange things that happened in the castle could have been explained by a cat knocking things over. "Or hide stuff from me?"

Happy brings his paws together and fiddles with them, looking shy all of the sudden. "No, I would never do that," he says, and it's the most obvious lie in the world.

Natsu eagerly bounces up and down. "Oh, oh, Lucy, look what I can d—"

"So it wasn't the dragon who took care of me, but you two?" Lucy asks, interrupting Natsu.

"That's what I'm telling you, I _am_ the dra—"

This time it's Happy that cuts Natsu off. "Aye, we take care of you!"

"Do you cook my meals, too?" Lucy asks, feeling a bit deflated.

Suddenly both Natsu and Happy point at each other. "He's the one who burned all the food!" they both accuse the other of doing at the same time.

Lucy wants to laugh at their childishness, but feels a bit weird, like it's too much information to take in at once. She can't believe it. All these years she thought the dragon was taking care of her, being gentle in his actions, like taking her back to her bedroom, fighting off warriors, cooking her meals, folding origami—but it was never the dragon in the first place? It was these two? These childish, ruckus making, cat and boy? Lucy doesn't _want_ to believe it, even if that means she has to ignore their perfectly valid explanation on why she's able to breathe around them (they're not human). It just can't be him! Her dragon is cool and caring, and always knew what to do—he's nothing like what they are. That's right, Natsu isn't a dragon, he's probably flat out lying to her. Her dragon would never laugh at her because a spell went haywire and made her hair grow as long as Rapunzel's. Her dragon has always been kind to her!

Well, indirectly anyway.

"Natsu, Natsu, remember the time she tried to ..." Happy suddenly starts giggling uncontrollably.

"Oh you mean that? Hahaha, yeah! I couldn't hold my laughter anymore, I was afraid she'd notice!" says Natsu, joining Happy with his laughter.

Lucy has no idea what they're talking about, but it's making her cheeks heat up nonetheless. They're laughing at her, making fun of her! Has it always been like that? These two secretly spying on her, and laughing at all of her misfortunes? That's not right at all, in fact, it's really insulting, and Lucy feels really violated of her privacy. No matter how much Lucy longs for another person to talk to, she won't put up with this humiliation. So she angrily stomps her foot on the ground, and hisses at the both of them, her temper flaring up.

"Stop laughing this instant!" she yells.

"And then she had to roll around for an entire day!" Natsu continues unabated, holding his stomach from his loud laughter.

"She looked like a _whale!_" Happy chimes in.

Suddenly Lucy realizes what 'incident' they're talking about, and she turns beet red. She had mentally blocked that terrible incident from her memory, because she was so extremely embarrassed afterwards, but these two knew! They had known all along! And they're laughing about it too! Lucy wants the ground to swallow her up. But the two kept making comments towards each other, and laughing even harder.

"S-stop it!" Lucy suddenly yells.

Natsu slows down his laughter, wiping away a tear from his eye and looking at her, amused. "Oh come on, you have to admit that was hilarious."

"It's my favourite memory of you Lucy," says Happy.

"How about that one time when she _set fire to her head?_" Natsu promptly starts laughing again.

"Oh right, haha yeah that was funny too!"

Lucy's body is seething with anger, and she balls her hands up into fists. She looks down at the floor, her blonde hair falling in front of her face. "Out," he says in an ice cold voice.

"Whatyah say?" Natsu asks, leaning in closer.

"I SAID OUT!" Lucy bellows, her voice carrying across the entire castle. Both Natsu and Happy stop laughing, and look at her wide eyed. She's shaking, she's angry, she's hurt, why are they laughing at her? She's already been alone for six long years, while they had each other all this time. She doesn't have to put up with this. "Now!" she says with a strong voice.

Hesitantly, Natsu and Happy back away, towards the door, suddenly quiet. "Y-yeah, it's probably not a good idea if I stick around, ya'know? Orders and all." Natsu swallows, then turns around to try and open the door but it won't budge. "Uhm, can you, open the door? You locked it with your thingamajig and all," he says sheepishly.

Lucy furiously swings her hand around. "_Eronium lock-off!_" she screams. She then smiles in satisfaction seeing the door hit the both of them in their face. Serves them right! As they both scurry off, Lucy uses the same spell again to slam the door into their behinds as they walk out.

She huffs and puffs and sits down on her bed, agitated, humiliated. The nerve they have! Making fun of her mistakes, and laughing at her. She's a princess, but most importantly, a human being with feelings! This was not how she imagined her first meeting with another person would go. She wanted someone to comfort her, tell her everything was going to be okay, and draw her into a hug. She sniffs; she didn't want two oafs making fun of her experiences with magic. They're stupid, they're mean, Lucy doesn't like them at all! And that boy Natsu is _so_ not her dragon. Her dragon is courageous and kind, and won't make fun of her at all. Besides, he doesn't even look like a dragon at all, he doesn't even look threatening! What's up with that stupid pink hair anyway!?

Angrily, Lucy spends the next few hours practicing her offensive magic, which is really just a small spell that repels objects away from her body. She uses a drawing of a human boy with pink hair as her target; it's hanging up on her door and his nose has got a giant fork sticking out of it. Lucy is pretty good at aiming after all that practice.

It is seven PM and her dumbwaiter chimes. It startles Lucy, despite knowing that her dinner has been arriving at the same time for years now. She finally takes a break from flinging dangerous projectiles towards a certain boy's face, and walks over to her dumbwaiter and inspects the tray of food.

It looks extravagant, definitely more so than usual. The colours are vibrant and lush, and Lucy is almost drooling at the delicious smell slowly filling up the room. And right next to her glass of orange juice, she sees another origami. It's a small figure of a girl in a long flowy dress. Lucy bends down on her knees and leans her arms on top of the dumbwaiter, poking the paper girl. It's extremely well done, there must be over a thousand creases in the paper to get that level of detail worked into the paper girl. Her frustration and anger slowly ebbs away as she looks at it with a smile and cups it in her hands. She brings it over to her collection, and places the girl next to the paper dragon. This is clearly the work of her dragon. The kind dragon that always makes little trinkets for her. The one that struggled for years to finally cook her the best food possible. The one that always gives her a birthday cake. The one that cares about her.

Her dragon is definitely not some pink haired boy.

**oOo**

It's been a few days since Lucy last saw Natsu and Happy, and while on one hand she has missed talking to someone real bad, she's not going to talk to people who merely want to laugh at her. So she's mostly steered clear of them, keeping herself busy by studying more magic, and even reading up on a few more books about dragons. All of the illustrations in those books look like dragons, none of them look like humans, so Lucy is pretty sure this Natsu guy is lying out of his ass.

After the third day of practicing magic, Lucy decides to take a break in the library. She starts reading another novel, and hasn't gotten rid of the habit of reading out loud to herself. It's a story about a cat that no one wanted because he was black, and people thought that meant he was the devil and brought misfortune with him wherever he went. The cat hated himself, and stayed away from everyone because they would always throw stones at him. One day he met someone who didn't stone him, but gave him food instead. The cat was obviously weary and suspicious, and didn't accept the food. But the man kept trying to feed the black cat each day, until finally ...

"_Limione!_" Lucy yells out the spell, and her book propels itself away from her body, flying towards an empty couch.

Well, it _looked_ like an empty couch, until Lucy hears a whelp of pain, and a blue cat suddenly appears on the couch cushions, holding his head with his paws.

"Owie, why did you throw that at me?" Happy asks as he starts crying.

"I don't want you spying on me. Go away, I'm still mad at you guys," says Lucy with a huff. She noticed something odd when she saw one of the cushions on the couch slightly move to the right. All these years before, Lucy would have chalked it up to the castle being enchanted, but now she knows better. It was an invisible Happy moving around and spying on her. Now she wonders if he'd been spying on her yesterday as well, or the day before.

"But, but—that hurt!" Happy says, and sniffs.

"You'll live," says Lucy.

"Wahh, I'm gonna tell Natsu about this."

Lucy huffs, refusing to be manipulated by those crocodile tears. Suddenly Happy sprouts wings and flies over to her, landing right next to her seat, with the book in his hand. He offers it to her.

"Don't stop reading," he says.

"Huh, why?"

"Because it was a nice story! I want to know how it ends."

Lucy takes the book from his paws and raises her eyebrow at him. "Can't you read it yourself if you want to know so badly?"

Happy looks down and shuffles on his spot. "I can't read ..."

"Oh." Of course he can't read; he's some weird cat griffin creature. "I guess I could ..."

"Yay!"

"But I'm still mad at you!" Lucy scolds him. But it's hard to stay mad when Happy is actually quite adorable and child-like.

Once again, he shyly shuffles his paws on the spot. "I'm sorry ... we didn't mean to make you mad," he says sincerely. "Natsu too, he was kind of nervous. You have to understand that we were told not to make contact with you!"

"I can see you follow rules quite vigorously," says Lucy and smiles at him. Happy puffs up his cheeks, turning a bit pink, which looks weird on his blue fur. "Who told you not to make contact with me?"

"I'm not supposed to say ... I'm not supposed to say those orders came from the person who put you in this castle."

Lucy is intrigued now; who does he mean? "But it was my father who came up with that idea, no?"

Happy shakes his head. "No, it was some bald guy. We didn't like him."

"Bald guy ..." Lucy thinks back on her time spent at the castle, but she doesn't really remember anyone bald. It's been so long; she's forgotten most of the faces of her servants and advisors. She only really remembers her father, her mother, and some of her personal knights. Everyone else is a blur. Lucy wonders if she'll ever return at all.

Suddenly Happy puts his paws on top of Lucy's arm, looking distressed. "Please don't tell him we talked to you! He said he'd off our heads if we did!"

Lucy laughs. "Is that so? Well I don't know ... you guys did make me pretty mad and hurt my feelings the other day ... I might let it slip." She's enjoying teasing the little cat, despite knowing she has no way of contacting anyone at all, and talking with Happy has basically been her second conversation in six long years.

"Nooo, you can't! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I won't laugh at your failures anymore! And I won't knock things over, either!" Happy says.

"Haha, okay, you're forgiven." Lucy pats him on the head; he's like a five year old child. "And what about Natsu then, huh? Am I going to get an apology from him?"

"Ah, he's been real sorry! He's actually been sulking around since then, he feels bad for making you mad ... he tried really hard on cooking you a delicious meal afterwards, too. I helped!"

Lucy blinks at him, it's true that she had gotten much better food then before, but then that means Natsu cooked it for her, whereas Lucy has always thought it had been the dragon who did it. "So Natsu cooks the food ..." she says slowly. Not the dragon. Lucy still hangs onto the thought that her kind dragon had cooked her all those meals, she still doesn't want to believe it was this boy who mocked her.

"Aye. I'm the one who gathers ingredients!" Happy says enthusiastically.

"From where?" Lucy asks, curious.

"From the nearest town of course! Have you never been there?"

Lucy looks at him dejectedly. "I can't leave the castle ..."

Happy gulps. "Oh right, I forgot ... Do you want me to bring you anything back next time I go? Like a big fish or something!"

"Haha well, you can eat that fish yourself. But since you're offering, how about some strawberries? They're in season right now, so hopefully they have them."

"Aye, will do!"

Lucy smiles at him, suddenly not feeling mad at all anymore.

"Lucy, why are you crying?" Happy asks, a sad expression gracing his face.

"Huh?" Lucy touches her cheek, and feels her fingertips touch something wet. Tears. She _is_ crying. "Oh, I ... I have no idea. I'm just ..." Overwhelmed? It's been her first real conversation in so many years ... all of that built-up tension has finally found a release. "Happy, I guess. Thank you for talking to me, I'm grateful."

Happy rocks back and forth, looking bashful again. "I'm sowwy I made fun of you ..." he says shyly. "I actually really like you!"

"Aw, thanks Happy. I'm not mad at you anymore."

"So, can you continue reading? You're the best at doing voices!"

Lucy's cheeks redden a bit. "I-I do voices?" She does? She must have done so subconsciously. "Wait, how would you know?" She narrows her eyes at him, and he tries to look innocent. "Were you always listening in on me whenever I read out loud?"

"... No of course not," Happy lies. It's so easy to see when he's lying. "Natsu does though!"

"So the both of you do?"

"Aye!" Happy pauses for a second as he realizes what he agreed to. "Wait, that was a trick question, no fair!" Lucy simply laughs. "Now continue, please! I have to know what happens to the cat."

Lucy smiles at him, then opens up the book again, starting from where she left off.

After spending an afternoon with Happy, reading him a story and watching his animated expressions as the plot unfolded, Lucy honestly feels overjoyed. She realizes she'd been acting irrational, getting mad at them, when instead she should be trying to get to know them. For example, she knows Happy doesn't read, he really likes fish, and has apparently listened to each and every story Lucy has ever read out loud. He also knows how good she is at singing, embarrassingly enough. She's also prodded him for more information, and now knows that's a nearby village close to the castle, and that's where most of the knights come from. He said the town now has an urban legend of a boy who spews fire, to which Lucy simply scrunched up her nose; she still refuses to believe Natsu is the dragon.

But fair is fair, he _is_ living in this castle, and has been helping out, so Lucy should probably apologize.

When Happy leaves to help prepare dinner, Lucy returns to her room. Her dinner comes with another origami. It's smaller than usually, but Lucy immediately recognizes the shape; it's a paper version of Happy. She laughs at it, finding it adorable, and puts it down next to her latest entry; the paper girl. Lucy looks at it with her hands on her hips. A dragon, a girl ... a cat. It's supposed to be them, isn't it? The girl is supposed to be her, the cat is supposed to be Happy, and the dragon ... well, obviously he's not a human boy!

She finishes her meal (it was good!), and then takes out a small piece of paper, folds it into a heart, and writes down; "I apologize for getting mad at you. I'd like to speak with you tomorrow after lunch if you'd like. Please meet me at the library." She places it on the tray, and sends it back to the kitchen using the dumbwaiter.

**oOo**

"He's LATE."

Lucy is fuming, sitting near the window of the library, staring at the doors, and waiting for that certain pink haired boy to come. She had asked him to meet her after lunch. Her lunch had arrived on the dot, as usual, but Natsu never appeared afterwards. In fact, it's almost time for dinner, that's how long Lucy's been waiting. If she weren't mad at Natsu before, then she definitely is now. He completely rejected her offer. How rude of him! And she was going to apologize as well! Now he's missed his chance, because Lucy will give him an earful when she does see him.

Wait, what if he decided he's going to continue the no-contact rule?

Lucy chews on her lip. She doesn't want that, not when she's finally gotten a conversation partner. Happy is nice to talk to, but she needs someone ... more human. And one that isn't thinking of fish all the time. So Natsu can't keep ignoring her—the cat's already out of the bag. She's seen them and talked to them, and even knows their names. So there's no reason to continue to ignore her, unless Natsu really doesn't like her. Well, if that's the case—she doesn't like him either!

An hour later, and Lucy finally gives up on waiting for the dimwitted boy. She angrily returns to her room, and refuses to touch the dinner that's waiting for her as well.

Stupid Natsu.

Lucy tries to calm herself down by continuing to write her own story—the one about a dragon protecting a princess—hunched over on her desk and with a quill in her hand. The dragon in her story is very brave, kind and romantic, too. The dragon would never hurt the princess, nor mock her, he'd always protect her. Just like the dragon living in Lucy's castle, who has always protected her for all these years. She really wants to meet him, she really does. She's written so many little notes to him, asking things like what his name was, how old he was, what the colour of his scales were.

Her quill stops scribbling across the page, and Lucy's eyes glaze over. The dragon never replied to her, because the dragon never got those little notes, did he? If Happy wasn't lying, then that means he and Natsu prepare her meals, and they were the ones that received the notes. Does that mean her dragon never baked her a cake either? Was he the one who folded all those origami pieces, or was it Natsu? Lucy had thought about it many times before; how could a dragon fold paper anyway? Dragons have claws, they don't have fingers and thumbs like humans, so Lucy always knew there was something a little off—it's because Natsu must have been the one who folded them all this time. So all these years, it was Natsu? He was the one who failed at cooking, and then got better later on? He made all those little trinkets for her? He was the one that always brought her back to her bedroom?

Lucy doesn't know what to think anymore, she had always thought the dragon did this. She had conjured up an image of a dragon in her head that was kind, protective, and sweet. Maybe it had been too much of an idealistic image of someone she'd never seen before, but she never would have thought the reality would have been this jarring. The reality that a boy had done all of this instead. A boy who mocked her, laughed at her, a boy who didn't even know how to hug her. It's a bleak reality, one that Lucy doesn't want to face. She'd much rather keep holding onto the hope that her dragon is as real as she believes.

That's all she needs to do; keep believing it's not Natsu.

A knock on her door scares the daylights out of her, and Lucy sits upright in an instant, completely alert. She tilts her head to the right and stares at her door. She definitely heard a knock. That's never happened before.

"C-come in?" she says, a bit hesitant. Is it Happy?

The door creaks as it opens, and out pops a bundle of pink hair. Natsu shuffles in, wearing the same black outfit she'd last seen him in. Lucy puffs out her cheeks and glares at him. He slowly closes the door behind him and steps into the middle of her room.

"Go away, I don't want to see you right now," says Lucy. Stupid asshole should have come to the library when he had the chance. She returns back to her writing, doing her best to ignore him.

"Uhm, I heard from Happy that you two talked a bit," says Natsu. "And he says you were mad at me and stuff ... I guess that's my fault?" Natsu kicks his feet at the ground, looking gloomy. "Sorry about that, I just haven't really talked to anyone else but Happy either, I was kinda excited at finally talking to you."

Lucy puts down her quill and sits sideways on her chair, facing him. "It's rude to laugh at me, and rude to keep me waiting," she says, scolding him.

"I know, I know! I'm sorry, 'kay? Man, I didn't want you to hate me on our first time meeting! I've been looking forward to it, you know." He scratches the back of his head, and looks completely out of his element, unlike how he first appeared to Lucy; confident and cheerful. And an idiot. "Sure I've seen you plenty of times before, and even carried you a bunch of times ... but I've never gotten to talk to you! Argh—I really shouldn't be talking to you anyway, if baldie finds out, he's gonna lock me up again."

Lucy's head feels like it's spinning, Natsu is definitely a talker. "Uh, baldie? You mean the man that hired you?"

Natsu looks up at her, confusion stretching across his face. "Hired me? Happy and I aren't hired. We're slaves, ya'know?"

"You mean servants ..." Lucy corrects him. Her father would never own any slaves!

"I'm pretty sure he said slave."

"Well that's silly. We don't own any slaves. My mother used to be heavily against it, and so my father refuses to enslave anyone." Lucy is a bit insulted that he'd think her father would ever do such a thing.

"Whatever, doesn't matter—you just gotta promise me you won't tell I talked to you! Ah man, I did so well for so long, you just _had_ to press that stupid button right as I was unloading the dumbwaiter. Stupid, stupid mistake."

Lucy huffs. "Well _sorry_ for wanting to send you a thank you note!"

"That was a thank you note?" Natsu asks, looking confused.

"Wait, did you make the cake for me?" Lucy asks at the same time.

Natsu bashfully looks down, as if he's suddenly feeling modest. "Maybe."

"Oh," is all Lucy says. So Natsu is the one who made the cake. Lucy isn't exactly thrilled to hear that, as that means it's definitely not the dragon who made all those cakes for her.

Natsu breaks out into a wide grin, looking cheerful and pleased with himself. "So, did you like it?"

"What, the cake?"

"Yeah!"

"It was ... okay," Lucy grits through her teeth. She finds herself unable to tell the truth, that she loved the cake, but that was only when she thought the dragon made it for her. Not some servant boy.

Natsu looks genuinely shocked. "What do you mean 'okay', that was definitely more than okay! It was awesome! I made Happy gather ingredients for it two months in advance, and I spent three days crafting all of those stupid flowers, and then baking it to perfection. In fact, I was so nervous getting it right, I made two, just in case I'd mess up the first one! Of course, Happy and I ate that one ourselves afterwards ..."

Lucy cracks a smile at that. He sounds so enthusiastic, and if there's any truth to what he's saying, it means he really tried his best at making the cake for her. It's sweet, in a way, but she still can't get over the fact it wasn't the dragon.

"So where's the dragon?" Lucy decides to ask.

Natsu drops his shoulders and looks at her with a bored expression. "Right in front of you, weirdo. You need to get your eyes checked."

"My eyes are fine! All I see is a boy in front of me, _not_ a _dragon._"

"I _am_ a dragon! Seriously!"

"Liar!"

"I'll show you!" Natsu says, his nostrils flaring up. Lucy sees him moving his body into a weird position, until he spots something. "Huh," Natsu says out loud. He points his finger at the dumbwaiter. "You didn't eat it."

Lucy looks to where he's pointing, at the tray full of food. "I wasn't hungry," she lies. Well, it's a half lie. She did lose her appetite after waiting for hours on that stupid idiot. "So why didn't you come to the library, huh?" Lucy finally demands to ask. She won't accept any sort of excuse!

"Uh, you mean yesterday? I gotta patrol the grounds, ya'know. Make sure no one's sneaking around. I clean, too." Then he narrows his eyes at her. "You're always making a _huge_ mess."

Lucy huffs indignantly. "I do not! I am a very clean and proper lady."

"Little miss princess sure knows how to leave behind a room full of hair then. Perhaps she shouldn't brush her hair so much," Natsu says in a posh and sarcastic voice.

"T-that—that was a one-time thing!" Lucy says, her cheeks flaring up with a blush. Stupid Natsu, he's making fun of her again. "Besides, that was two years ago!"

"And I still find hair every now and then!"

"Well, then you're just a bad cleaner!"

"Say that again!" Natsu fires back at her, taking a few steps closer, and looking intimidating.

But Lucy won't be intimidated. "I said you do a terrible job of cleaning—and when do you clean anyway. How come I never see you. Do you turn invisible as well?"

Natsu crosses his arms over his chest and snorts. "I wish. Nah, only Happy can. I'm just good at what I do, I'm practically a ghost!"

"Until four days ago, you mean," Lucy points out.

Natsu grits his teeth. "That was a one-time thing!" he says, repeating Lucy's own words. She smiles at that.

"Well then, I think we can forget about our past mistakes, no?" Lucy suggests.

"Yeah, sure, just don't tell anyone about it," Natsu says. "Seriously, I'm not supposed to talk to you, like, at all."

"What other things aren't you 'supposed' to do?" Lucy asks.

"Uh. Uhm ... there was a whole list of rules, but hehe ... I might have forgotten about most of them. Oh! I couldn't harm you, of course."

"... Would you have done so if it wasn't a rule?" Lucy asks, horrified at the thought of it.

"What, no! I wouldn't hurt you," says Natsu. "That's stupid, why would I hurt you if I'm supposed to protect you?"

"I don't know—I didn't even know you were living in this castle. I thought it was just the dragon and me."

"For the last time—_I am the dragon!_"

"I'm more of a dragon than you are, my curse has the name 'dragon' in it," Lucy scoffs.

Natsu glares at her, but for once, shuts up. "Fine, don't believe me then. Not like I care." And now he's crossing his arms again and pouting. He really is a little kid. Lucy sighs.

For a minute, the both of them don't talk, with Lucy sitting at her desk, and Natsu blatantly not looking in her direction. She ponders on what he's said so far, about the cleaning and everything. It's starting to make a lot of sense now. The castle wasn't enchanted to clean itself; it had always been Natsu. And goblets didn't walk on its own; it was an invisible Happy, probably playing a prank on her (he had admitted to messing around with small objects as a way to scare Lucy). And now that she's found out, it only annoys her more; for years she had believed otherwise, and now she feels stupid for finding out the truth. And if Lucy can help it, she won't find out the truth about the dragon. Natsu just can't be it.

"So," Natsu starts, and he rocks back and forth on his feet. "Yah gonna eat that or what? Happy and I will be glad to finish it for you," he says, and points at the dumbwaiter again.

Lucy shakes her head. "Go ahead and eat it, I'm not hungry."

Natsu dashes towards the dumbwaiter, passing Lucy in a blink of an eye, and grinning at the tray full of food. "Uhm, do you ..." Natsu turns around and faces Lucy, showing a small paper swan in the palm of his hands, "still want this?" Natsu looks away from her eyes, and shuffles his feet on the spot, looking shy all of the sudden. "It's okay if you don't, I mean, whatever."

Lucy stands up from her chair, and quickly walks over to Natsu, her hands already stretched out to reach for the paper swan. "No, that's mine," Lucy says. She quickly takes it from Natsu's hand, scooping it up in her own. She quietly looks at it; it's beautifully made, and shows the same finesse and detail as all the other ones that preceded it. It was made by the same person. Lucy's brown eyes travel up, until she locks eyes with Natsu, who has a weird expression on his face that Lucy can't quite place. They're so close right now, in each other's personal space, but neither moves away. It's like time seems to stand still for several long minutes as Lucy continues to look at him, studying every detail on his face. From the small faded scars on his cheek, to the tiny mole on his forehead, and to the length of his pink hair that's falling into his eyes.

"You made this, didn't you," Lucy says. It's not a question.

Natsu swallows, and gives her a tiny nod. "Yeah."

"You made all of the other ones before this one as well, didn't you."

"Yeah ..."

Lucy looks down at her hands again, cradling the swan against her stomach. These origami usually make her smile and feel happy, but right now, Lucy isn't smiling, she feels kind of breathless and dizzy instead. Her dragon never cooked her food, never carried her to bed, never baked her a cake and never folded her origami. Unless the boy in front of her really is the same dragon she's known about for years. Yet her brain refuses to accept the connection, to erase that image in her head of a big dragon with wings, carefully taking care of her like a gentleman. Her eyes flicker up to Natsu's again.

"If you're really the dragon ... how come you never answered my questions?"

Natsu frowns. "Questions? What questions?"

"The ones I wrote down on the little notes."

"_Oh_," Natsu exclaims. "You mean _those_."

"Yes ... those notes. Did you never answer them because it was another one of those rules?" Lucy wants to know the truth, why all these years a human boy never bothered to reply to her.

Natsu grimaces and looks away from her eyes. "That's not it ... Or well, it is, I'm not allowed to make any sort of contact with you ... but." He clears his throat then shrugs his shoulders. "I sorta can't read?" he says with a nervous chuckle.

Lucy blinks. Wait, what—he can't read either? Just like Happy? "... You can't read."

"That's what I said."

"No one ever taught you?"

"No dragon I know of can read, so ... nope. No one taught me."

Lucy feels a bubble of laughter coming up, and she lets out an undignified snort. She immediately covers her mouth with one of her hands, and turns away from Natsu, finally leaving his personal space. She slowly walks over to her shelf of origami, and places the swan on it.

"All these years, I've been writing notes to you, and you could never read it ..." she says, her back still turned to Natsu. "Now I feel stupid." And stupid about being mad that Natsu didn't come to the library today. He couldn't _read_ the invitation in the first place. He had no idea she was expecting him.

"Not as stupid as I feel," Natsu grumbles. "At least you can read and stuff."

Lucy spins around to face him with a small smile on her face. "Is that why you like to listen to me read stories?"

Natsu's suddenly blushes. "Happy told you about that!?" Lucy simply laughs. "Stupid cat, I'll get him back for that ..."

"It's okay, how about from now on, instead of hiding yourself, why don't you come and sit next to me as I read?" Lucy offers.

Natsu looks like he's genuinely contemplating the offer. "You wouldn't find me a bother then?" he asks.

Lucy quickly shakes her head. "Of course not! I haven't spoken to someone in six years, I'll be glad to have someone with me that I could talk to."

"Alright, if you say so." Natsu grins at her, and Lucy finds herself smiling back at him. He's such a cheerful and simpleminded guy. "You know, I've always wanted to talk to you," he says, scratching his nose and chuckling a bit. "If I had learned how to read, then we would have been talking ages ago!"

"Haha, I guess that's true. Though I did hear you talk to me once," Lucy notes.

"Huh, when!?"

"Five days ago when you brought me to my bedroom. I was awake. At first I thought I was dreaming, but afterwards I realized I wasn't." She remembers how he held her in his arms, and how warm he was, and it was the first time she's ever been touched by another person in some very long years.

"Ahh, you weren't supposed to hear that!" Natsu says, panic in his voice.

Lucy laughs again. This feels nice, talking to someone and sharing experiences with them. It's been way too long, and it's a little bit overwhelming to her still, but she's steadily getting used to it. She's still not ready to accept the fact that Natsu's been the one taking care of her since the start, but she can't hate him either. He seems like a very nice and cheerful person, albeit a little clueless and a bit of an idiot. But hey, his idiocy can be fixed at least.

"So Natsu, how about I teach you how to read?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Dragon Guardian**

**A/N:** I didn't expect to get so swamped with work and other things, so expect even slower updates. I'd love to write more (and I can, quite easily), but I've gotta get other things finished first! So here's a long chapter just to tide you over.

* * *

Lucy wants to take back her words. She wants to turn back time and not have ever asked Natsu if he wanted to learn how to read. It's their third session so far, but Lucy has quickly figured out that Natsu is a natural. A natural idiot, that is. She's grateful he keeps her company—that's not something she's complaining about at all—but his idiocy can really get on her nerves sometimes. Lucy has always been smart, and it was never hard for her to learn anything at all (well, if you ignore her mishaps with magic ...), and she was well versed in knowledge she has gathered over the years in the library. But Natsu? Natsu is as dense as a rock. No, he's probably denser than the rock, because during one of their sessions, Natsu had bragged about busting open a rock with his head because Happy bet him he couldn't do it. Needless to say, Natsu was stupid enough to prove Happy wrong.

How could they let anyone this stupid look after the princess of the kingdom? Was her father really out of options that he had to take these two as a last resort? Well, to be fair, it's not like he could order any humans to protect her; that would kill her.

Lucy eyes Natsu in the corner of her eye, looking at him suspiciously. He doesn't look like a dragon, but everything that has happened to far points to the fact that he is in fact, the dragon in her castle.

"Yah got a lazy eye or somethin'? You're looking at me funny," Natsu says.

Lucy's face heat up with a rosy colour and she puffs out her cheeks. "N-no I don't!" she sputters, embarrassed he caught her staring at him. "Now pay attention, what letter is this again?" Lucy points to her many papers on the floor, to one with a huge letter L written on it.

"Uhh." Natsu crosses his arms and squints his eyes at the picture. "It's an M! Definitely an M."

Lucy sighs. "No, that's an L. Remember? That's the first letter of my name."

Natsu laughs nervously. "Oh, right—I knew that!"

"Okay, can you point me the first letter of _your_ name?"

Natsu looks around, and Lucy can tell he doesn't know the answer. He then randomly slams his hand down on one of the parchments and picks it up. "This one!" he says in a very confident voice with a matching grin, holding up the letter Y.

Lucy shakes her head. "Nope, that's a Y. That's actually the last letter of my own name." Lucy starts collecting the papers off the ground, and rearranges them next to each other so that it spells her name. "L-U-C-Y," she says, pointing at each letter as she pronounces it.

"Oooh," says Natsu in awe. "Now do my name!"

Lucy picks up the remaining letters, and places them in a vertical line above her own, so that her name and Natsu's name share the letter U. She kind of feels like she's playing some sort of word game, but if this is how Natsu will remember the alphabet, then so be it.

Natsu grins and points at the U. "We share a letter together! What does that mean? Does it mean we're special?"

"Hm, no, it means names are made up out of a limited amount of letters. There's only twenty six letters that we can use to write a name with, so that means people end up sharing a lot of letters in their names. For example, Happy shares the latter A with you, as you're called Natsu. Happy also shares the letter Y with me, from Lucy. And—hey, who told you to doze off!" Lucy angrily claps her hands to wake Natsu up, who had managed to close his eyes and snore in record time as she was teaching him.

"W-what!" Natsu says, startled. "I'm awake! Totally awake." He leans in closer to Lucy. "What were you saying again?"

Lucy sighs yet again. "I'm going to take a little break and ... freshen up. Why don't you try and memorize your own name while I'm at it?" Before Natsu can answer, Lucy briskly walks out of the library to cool her head. Any longer and she would have flown off the handle and scolded Natsu for his irresponsible behavior, and how he's really such an idiot. Fortunately, Lucy has a great deal of patience, so she's going to walk around for five minutes before she'll try another attempt again. Teaching Natsu how to read is really hard ...

"Lucy!" says a child-like voice.

Lucy screams, feeling her heart jump out of her throat, and she looks next to her, seeing little Happy suddenly appear out of nowhere and tug on her skirt with his paw. "S-stop doing that, Happy! It scares me."

"Hehe, I know." Lucy glares at him, and he innocently looks down at the floor. "So, how's it going with Natsu? Can he read yet? Will he be able to read stories for me?"

Lucy shakes her head and starts to walk again. "Don't count on it. He is rather ... challenged, when it comes to learning things, I guess. It'll take some time."

"How long?"

"I don't know, maybe a year or two?"

"Whaaat? Are you sure? Sheesh, Lucy, and I thought you were smart and could teach him super fast."

Lucy huffs, taking offense to that. Happy is always giving her some kind of backhanded compliment. "I _am_, it's Natsu that isn't," she immediately says.

Happy stops walking along with her, standing in the middle of the hallway, suddenly a gloomy expression on his face. "It's not our fault. We just never had anyone teach us," he says. "I know we're stupid ... but I thought Lucy could help us ..."

When Happy looks at her with such big round eyes, Lucy can't help but feel sorry for him. She turns around and crouches down to his level. "Oh Happy, I didn't mean it like that. I know the both of you didn't have the same life I had. I was blessed with many teachers, and I learned how to read from an early age, but mostly it was my mother who taught me everything. Didn't you have any parents who taught you things?

Happy shrugs. "I don't know my parents. Natsu says he found me when I was still an egg."

Lucy frowns. An egg? What. Do cats hatch from eggs? Then again, do cats even _fly and turn invisible?_ She shakes her head. Some things are better left unsaid. "So you never knew your family?"

"No, but I don't mind. Natsu is my family! Aye!"

She smiles sadly at that. It makes her miss her mother and father again. She really wants to see her father, it's been way too long. "What about Natsu?"

"Hmm, Natsu was already separated from his pack when he met me, so I don't really know. But I do know his dad was supposed to be the strongest dragon of them all!"

"Haha ... strongest ... dragon." Lucy still can't see him as a dragon. He just looks like a normal boy to her, albeit one with pink hair. "So does that mean you've never seen a dragon besides, you know, Natsu?"

"Aye. Natsu's the only dragon I've met. I haven't met that many people either ... Lucy is the sixth person I've met!"

The more she talks to Happy and finds out information about their old lives, the more Lucy regrets asking. It all sounds so morbid and depressing. Were they honestly slaves in her castle? Was it true? Were they really locked up under her father's orders? "So Happy, um, before you came to this castle, where did you live?" Lucy decides to ask anyway.

"In the castle, of course!" Happy then scratches his butt. "Uncomfortable sleeping on the floors though. I usually slept on top of Natsu's belly."

"Were you ... were you sleeping in a cage?" Lucy's voice almost tears up.

"Aye!"

Lucy feels torn. She's heard her father swear to her he'd never hold anyone as a slave—her mother made sure of that, but hearing this from Happy ... it all points to one thing; Natsu and Happy were slaves. They slept in cages, with no beds, they had no formal education, and have barely met another human being aside from herself, and a handful of other people. She can feel tears well up in her eyes at realizing her father had lied to her.

Happy suddenly pats her on her shoulder. "Don't be sad Lucy. It makes you look ugly."

Lucy pulls at Happy's ears, making him meow in pain and profusely apologize. She immediately lets go when something white whizzes past her face. Lucy turns into the direction it flew off in, and sees something white land on the cobblestones of the hallway. She quirks her eyebrows at it. Then suddenly, another one flies right by her again, this time landing even further.

"Oh, Natsu's making birdies! Yay, I love birdies!" Happy rushes towards the library, leaving Lucy to stand there, bemused.

She walks over to the spot where there's a folded paper resting on the ground. It's got wings on the side. It doesn't look like a dragon, nor a bird, so Lucy doesn't know what it is. She picks it up and inspects it even further. It's got a lot of lines and hidden detail that pretty much makes it proof it's made by Natsu. Over these past few days, Lucy has accepted the fact Natsu is the one who made her all of the origami. She's not exactly happy about it, though.

Lucy then cocks her head to the side as she sees black ink on one of the wings. She unfolds it, and sees the letter Y. She growls. "Natsu!" Lucy stomps back into the library, and sees that Natsu has folded all of the paper into different shapes, and is now throwing them around, causing them to glide in the air for a very long time. It almost looks like he's controlling them with magic, but Lucy knows Natsu's too stupid to know any magic.

"Natsu!" she calls out to him. Natsu's in the middle of the room, and he immediately stands up straight, dropping the latest entry of the batch behind him, in the hopes Lucy didn't see it. "What are you doing? We're using these to help you learn how to read! D-don't play around with them!"

"But don't you like them?" Natsu says, shuffling his feet on the ground.

"What—you made fun of my work, why should I—" Suddenly another one of the origami flies by her face, this time gracefully gliding through the air and going around in a loop before it lands the right side up. "—How'd you do that?" she asks, suddenly mystified. _Is_ Natsu using magic or not? That thing practically flew like it had a mind of its own!

Natsu grins, and then grabs one from the floor, throwing it up in the air, and having it circle around the large chandelier in the room, coming down in a spiral. "I've gotten pretty good at making these! See, the way they glide through the air all depends on how you fold them, and stuff. See this one?" Natsu hops over to Lucy, eagerly showing her one folded origami that looked like a bird's beak, since it was so long and pointy. "This one is build for speed and distance, it'll fly really far! Here, throw it, it's fun!" He shoves it into her hands.

Lucy looks at it suspiciously; should she really be encouraging Natsu to fool around and skip out on learning? She looks into his eyes, those sparkling bright eyes, that are so eager and happy, and Lucy loses her resolve. Alright, she can indulge this idiot for a bit. She pulls back her arm, clutching the paper in her hand, but suddenly Natsu stops her, placing his warm hand on top of hers.

"No, no, you have to pinch it with your fingers, like this," he says. His fingers smoothly move over hers; they feel gentle and attentive. Is he always like this when he handles his origami? Lucy finds it hard to imagine, considering how hyper he is all the time, he doesn't seem to be the kind to slow down and treat something with care. But right now, he is, instructing Lucy how to hold the paper, using her index finger and her thumb to hold the flap in the middle. "And that's how you hold it, now throw it!" Natsu pulls his hand away, and takes a step back, eagerly waiting for her to throw.

Lucy bites her lip, then looks straight ahead, seeing Happy flying around and throwing more of them around as well. She aims at him, pulling her arm back once more, and then flinging it forwards, letting go of the paper and seeing it pierce through the air like an eagle. Within a second, it crashes against the wall on the other side of the library from where they were standing. It went as straight as an arrow. Her lips curl up. That was kinda ... "Fun," she says, looking at Natsu. "Can I get one that did the loopy thingy?"

Natsu laughs, and he quickly dashes off to find one that fits her description, swooping it up in his arm and bringing it back to Lucy like a faithful dog. She takes it from his hands and launches it. This one moves a lot slower in the air, but it's actually flying up higher, until it circles around in a loop, and lands on the floor.

"Wow, you're good at these!" she says.

Natsu seems to brim with happiness as she says this. "I had a lot of practice, hehe." He picks up another paper from the floor, an unfolded one with the letter N on it. "Here, I'll make you one that returns to you."

Lucy, curious as to how Natsu has always gone about his paper folding skills, tentatively watches him sit down on the floor. His cheerful expression is momentarily replaced by one that's more serious looking; he's focused. Then his hands get to work, and they move based on muscle memory, Natsu has definitely gotten a lot of practice indeed. He's quick and accurate, his technique, even though Lucy hardly know anything about it, is flawless. She can tell because there are no wasted movements in his fingers, it's like he's done this a thousand times. Within a minute, Natsu's serious expression morphs back into his old goofy one. He smiles up at her and offers the origami to her like some kind of token. "Try it!" he says. "It should return to you like a boomerang."

Lucy takes it from his hand, and smiles at him. He seems to be having a lot more fun than when she was trying to teach him how to read. But hey, _she's_ having a lot more fun as well! And it's all because of these pointless folded papers.

Who is Lucy kidding—the origami she has received over the years had never been pointless to her. They had given her hope and a sense of warmth. And the one she's holding in her hand right now, feels like all the other ones; it was made with care and purpose. It was made for her. She'll treasure them all.

Lucy flings it in the air. It's fast as it glides towards one of the bookcases, but just before it hits a book, it curves to the right, until it's done a complete u-turn, and is rushing back to her. Lucy catches it in her hands with a laugh.

She turns to Natsu, holding it in her hand. "It really did come back!" she gushes. "And you didn't even use any magic at all."

"That's because I'm awesome!" Natsu says, showing her a thumbs up and grinning at her. She can't help but grin back.

Then Lucy gets an idea. "Hey ... what if we _do_ add a little bit of magic?"

Natsu's interest is peaked. "Such as ...?"

Happy finally stops circling around the room and lands on the floor. "What are you two whispering about?" he asks.

Lucy simply puts a finger to her lips and winks at him, leaving the cat confused. She then holds the paper in front of her chest, remember the spell she had used on Happy not too long ago. She properly breathes in to steady herself, then she looks at the paper with focused eyes.

"_Limione,_" Lucy says.

The instant her chant was executed, the paper _tears_ itself out of her hands and flies ahead at full speed like a bird soaring through the sky. Natsu jumps up in the air, letting out a roar.

"Whoa, look at it go!"

"Aye, I've never ever seen it go that fast before! Go, go birdie!"

Lucy's smile grows bigger as she sees it nearing the other end of the wall, but it's not losing speed at all. In fact, it's still going! The paper finally disappears out of their sights when it exits the window. All three of them rush over, worried they had lost the 'birdie' as Happy calls them. Lucy pushes her hands up against the magical barrier—the one preventing her from escaping through the windows—and looks outside. She sees the small white object still flying straight, until it's flying over the tops of the trees, and slowly starts tilting to the right.

"It's coming back!" she says eagerly, turning to Natsu and grinning at him.

Natsu squints his eyes into the distance. "You're right, it is! Wow!"

Happy is the one who catches it mid-air when it flies through the window again. All of them erupt in cheers and ohs and ahs. Lucy is smiling and giggling, and Natsu is throwing his fist in the air. He then throws an arm around her in this state of cheerfulness, pulling her close until she's awkwardly pressed up against him. Lucy can't help but feel happy. This is probably the stupidest thing ever—seriously, who likes throwing around paper birds?—but it's the most fun she's had in years. She's been waiting for this, longing for this, companionship, laughter, touch, she's all wanted it, and Natsu is now here, giving it to her. She doesn't even think twice about it when she throws both her arms around Natsu and hugs him close.

"Thank you," she whispers in his ear, low enough so Happy won't hear.

Natsu places a hand on top of her hand and ruffles up her blonde hair. "You're welcome."

Lucy sees the window over Natsu's shoulder. She sees the trees of the forest, and the blue of the sky. She pulls away from Natsu and looks at the clouds longingly. "It'd be nice if I could fly outside, too," she muses.

Both Natsu and Happy look at each other, understanding what she meant. After all, Lucy is unable to leave the castle.

**oOo**

"Lucy, you're staring again."

"Huh? Oh sorry, I was just looking at the cherry blossoms. They've just started blooming, so they look really pretty."

Natsu pouts at her. "You're supposed to be giving me attention though!"

"Alright, alright." Lucy holds up a card (using paper around Natsu always seems to turn into origami at one point) with the letter B on it. "What's this one?"

"K!" Natsu declares.

"Wrong!"

"Ugh. But they look so similar ..."

Lucy draws loops around the letter. "The B has closed round edges, see?" She then picks up another card, this time with the letter K on it. "This one is all straight, and there's no closed edges."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I just can't seem to remember it ..."

Lucy tilts her head a bit sideways, as she ponders about Natsu's ability to learn. If the past has been any indication to how fast Natsu learns to pick new things up, it'll be quite a while until he'll finally get it. Cooking good food took him four years. Folding really detailed origami took him three years. Yup, this is definitely going to take a while. But it's alright, Lucy doesn't really care. She's happy now that she's spending time with someone, and each day that passes, she feels a lot more cheerful and happy. Their sessions together is pretty much the only thing Lucy's got looking forward to during her day.

Her eyes end up wandering over towards the window again, looking at the bright blue sky and the small pink buds on the trees. Lucy sighs. She wants to go outside.

**oOo**

A sudden thunderous sound awakens Lucy. She bolts upright from her bed and tries to look in the darkness for whatever that sound was. Is it a storm brewing? Lucy slips out of her bed and tip toes over to her window. It's dark, but she can see the full moon high in the sky, with only a few clouds. It's a clear sky. How odd. Did she imagine the sound? No, she definitely heard something loud alright. Should she call for Natsu to check it out?

Lucy shakes her head; since when has she ever relied on someone other than herself these past few years? She's not about to start now, not when she can easily investigate herself. Yes, there is no need to call for Natsu, that's silly. Perhaps Lucy has become more complacent with him now that they've been spending so much time together. Every day, really. Maybe she's trying to come up with excuses to spend more time with him, and that really doesn't sit well with Lucy.

Then, not a second later, Lucy hears it again. A loud and muffled sound, like something is being dragged across the stone floor. Something heavy. It scares her yet simultaneously excites her; what could it be? It's not like the sound could be anything dangerous as Lucy is still able to breathe, so it's definitely not some idiot knight coming to save her again. Something probably fell over in the hallway—maybe it was Happy who knocked things over. So Lucy claps her hands to turn all the candles on in her room and she pulls on a robe to keep herself warm in the night as she enters the cold hallway. Candles light up one by one as soon as Lucy passes them by, they're quite convenient to have around, those magical candles. She holds in her breathe as she looks around for anything that fell over, but finds nothing out of place.

What could it have been?

Maybe she really should call Natsu ...

"No, that's stupid Lucy, stop relying on him so much," Lucy tells herself. Besides, it's not he could do something that Lucy couldn't. So far, she hasn't actually _seen_ Natsu do anything, aside from folding origami and being bad at reading. All in all, he's been a regular human boy to her, and if he can do anything, so can she. Lucy doesn't need help.

This time a ruffled sound is heard, it's almost like Lucy's hearing the trees of the forest swaying in the wind, but she knows she can't hear anything within these walls. In fact, it seemed to have come from the library ... Lucy pulls her robe together around her body and sneaks her way across the dimly lit hallway. She hears it again; the rustling of leaves. It's getting the louder the closer she gets to the large arched doors of the library. Despite being used to the unusual things in the castle, Lucy's heart is still thumping like mad. The closer she gets to the sound, the quicker it goes. Then as soon as she's near the door, the sound stops.

Lucy has to be honest, she's a little scared here. Alright, she's kind of really freaking out and afraid of what it might be. Is it an animal? A large animal that will eat her? A boogeyman she read about?

Her fingers reach for the large metal handle, but she lingers, stalls long enough to rethink her actions.

Calling Natsu right not doesn't seem like a bad idea anymore.

Ah, who cares! Open those doors, Lucy!

With a forceful push, Lucy barges into the library—subsequently tripping over something on the ground and falls down to her knees, her hoodie falling down over her head so she can't see anything. She immediately tears it off, and stands up straight. The candles in the library burst into flames at the sign of life, illuminating the very big ...

"Ah, it's Lucy!" says Happy.

Both Happy and Natsu are standing in the middle of the room, looking like they've just been caught. But that's not the weird thing about this entire scenario, not even when Natsu desperately tries to blow out the candles, no, the unusual thing that stands out to Lucy, is the giant tree rooted up from the floor, hitting the tall ceiling of the library. Its roots are sprawled across the floor, and there's pink petals scattered around the base. The cherry blossoms gently sway in the wind that's coming from the open window. It's entirely majestic to Lucy, and she's absolutely stunned, at a loss of words. She takes a few tentative steps forwards, making sure not to trip over any of the roots again, her eyes locked onto the pink petals. Her face is glowing with a bright smile, and when she reaches the trunk, she turns her head to Natsu, who's still trying to run across the room to blow out the candle, despite them turning right back on.

He feels her eyes on him, and turns to face her. He sighs loudly and slumps against the wall, looking defeated.

"You weren't supposed to see this until the morning ..." he says.

Lucy spreads out her fingers and her tips touch the bark—she hasn't felt a piece of nature like this in a long, long time. It's organic and real, and the boy and cat in the room with her are also very real. "How, how did you manage to get this in the room?" she asks in complete wonder.

Happy suddenly flies over her head, and seats himself on a low hanging branch to speak to her. "He carried it through the window!"

Lucy's mouth drops open. He carried it!? This entire tree? It was taking up half the library! How in the world did he pull off that trick?

Suddenly Natsu appears next to her, grinning from ear to ear. "So, what do yah think? Cool, right?"

"Yeah ..." Lucy says. "Cool." She giggles at what she's saying. It's still such a shock to her, Lucy can't help but be amazed by Natsu's strength, as well as his ability to be able to give Lucy exactly what she needs. "Why did you ...?" she starts to ask.

"You kept looking at 'em outside, so I figured you'd want to see it up close, or something." Natsu then looks down, sheepishly. "And then maybe you'd stop spacing out so much and ignoring me," he mumbles.

Lucy faces him, her eyebrows lowered. "I do not!" Okay, that's a lie, she _has_ been spacing out a lot and looking outside. "Alright, I might have, a little."

Not like it was her fault; the cherry blossoms this year simply looked beautiful. And now it's in front of her, for real, and Natsu and Happy did it all for her. She can't stop herself from wrapping her arms around the trunk, giving it a weird hug, despite the tree being too big for her arms to close all the way. She presses her cheek up against the hard bark, and smiles. It smells like nature, a scent that calms her down. She slowly pulls away, and sees a fully bloomed petal on her shoulder, which she slides onto her finger. It's so pink and pretty, Lucy would have never thought she'd see it up close like this again. So she giggles and steps over towards Natsu, her outstretched hand holding the petal. She stuffs it behind Natsu's ear, pinning away some of his pink hair. He frowns at her, but then laughs as he pulls one of the flowers from a branch, and does the same thing to her.

Happy starts flying around, throwing petals all around them, like it was magic raining down on them.

Lucy, now completely covered in pink petals, yanks on Happy's tail so she can straddle him in her arms and hug him tight. "Thanks, you guys," she says. "Thank you so much."

**oOo**

Lucy hums a song to herself as she turns the page of her book. She's having a break underneath the tree, which is giving her shade from the sun that's streaming in from the windows. It hadn't taken her that much effort to use some magic and bind the tree to the stone floor, so it could still grow, provided it had sunlight. So now she has a real life tree in her library, one that is absolutely beautiful.

She still can't figure it out how Natsu managed to get it inside. Not only is it a huge tree, but this is also the second floor. It is unlikely Natsu had uprooted the tree, and simply carried it on his back and jumped through the window—the image alone makes Lucy laugh. But then how else did he get it here? Lucy has a theory Natsu knows some magic. There's no way an ordinary boy could have gotten this tree inside, so obviously he has to know magic. She wonders who taught him, considering he can't even read.

Natsu's been improving though. He can now remember most letters of the alphabet, and can actually write his own name. It had taken a few weeks, and a few lectures coming from Lucy on how to properly write, but he's finally managed to do it. And after Natsu was finally able to write his name, she had gotten an idea.

"Lucy!" Natsu hollers as he crashes through the doors. "I got you the knife!" he says excitedly, holding it in his hands and rushing over towards her like he's going to kill her with it.

"Natsu, careful! Don't fall down and stab me!" Lucy shields her face with the book, afraid Natsu's going to show off his infamous clumsiness.

"I-I wouldn't do that!" Natsu says indignantly, flaring his nostrils at her. He hands her the knife, the handle pointing at her. "Why'd you want it anyway?"

Lucy puts down the book and carefully takes the large knife out of Natsu's hand. Natsu and knives don't really go together, just putting them together in a sentence spells disaster, but to actually have him playing around with some makes Lucy very cautious indeed. She stands up and makes sure Natsu is an adequate distance away from the knife, before she turns around and faces the tree.

"Back at home," Lucy starts, setting the tip of the blade against the bark. "We'd carve our own names into a tree." She scrapes the knife down, creating a vertical clean line in the tree. "And then every year we'd compare how much higher the tree had grown, because our names would be higher." She makes a few more scratches, until the name 'LUCY' is spelled into the tree. She smiles at it satisfactorily, and then turns to Natsu. "Since you didn't know how to write your own name, that means you've never done it before. So I figured ... this could be your first time."

"I see!" Natsu exclaims happily. "I wanna do it, I wanna!" He quickly snatches the knife from Lucy's hands—she immediately splutters in protest and starts to ramble off a lecture about safety and knives—and then quickly starts _hammering_ down the tree trunk with the knife. A bunch of splinters fall away onto the ground, and Lucy is horrified Natsu might cut off his own finger, and she tugs onto his vest to get him to stop.

And right as he pulls away, he shows her the result.

_LUCY  
NALSU_

Lucy giggles, but immediately covers her mouth. She clears her throat and tries not to laugh again. "Natsu, hand it to me again," she says. "_Carefully_."

Natsu rolls his eyes and drops the knife into her hands. "It's not going to _kill_ you, you know. I work with knives every day! Being the cook and all."

Lucy ignores Natsu, and corrects his mistake, carving a horizontal line on top of his L to turn it into a T. She nods her head at it. "There, fixed."

"Oh ... right. I knew it was written like that. I was just checking to see if _you_ knew how to write my name correctly. Hah. Haha."

Lucy glares at Natsu. "Well anyways, it seems there's still a lot of work left for me to do, so let's continue. Sit," she commands Natsu. He bends down, crosses his legs and end up leaning against the tree, his eyes not focused on her book, but on their names carved into the tree. She carefully stows the knife away in a safe place before returning to her spot again.

"I wonder how long it'll take before it'll grow!" Natsu says.

"A while, Natsu. You probably won't even notice it. Now, let's begin again."

"Fiiiine."

Lucy continues her lessons with Natsu, metaphorically hammering his name into his head, since he still seems to have difficulty with it. At first Lucy thought she was a bad teacher, but it's pretty easy to see that Natsu is just really, _really_ slow at learning. He's nice and sometimes sweet, but the boy's got the intelligence of a cow—Lucy can't possibly know the reason why her father hired him, it couldn't be his wits. Then again, if what Happy said is true, they weren't hired, they are ... slaves. Lucy still doesn't like that thought, but it's been nagging her, eating away at her. There's so many things she wants to ask, but she's afraid Natsu can't answer, or worse, doesn't want to answer. Or perhaps everything they're telling her is a lie, but Lucy won't let herself continue that paranoid line of thinking. She has to find out the truth.

"Natsu ... what was your life like before you came here?" Lucy asks carefully.

Natsu, happy that Lucy stopped drilling him the alphabet, scoots closer to her. "It was awesome!" he exclaims. "I rode around on my dad's back all of the time, and pulled a lot of pranks."

"Your dad?" Lucy inquires.

"Yeah, Igneel. He's the one who gave me this scarf." Natsu points at his belt. Lucy blinks—that wasn't a sash? It was a scarf ...? "Made with his own scales!" Natsu says proudly.

Lucy can't help herself as she touches the fabric in curiosity. She'd expected the silver shiny sash to feel rigid and hard, but it feels like any ordinary fabric. It actually feels like silk as her fingertips slide over the scale pattern. "They don't feel like scales," Lucy says. She feels a bit silly for thinking they're dragon scales. "So your dad was just a regular human like you."

Natsu shakes his head. "He was a fully grown adult dragon! His scales are actually black, but for some reason, they turned silver when he made this scarf for me ... not quite sure why."

Maybe that's because his father wasn't really a dragon. Lucy keeps her lips shut, if Natsu wants to believe his dragon fairy tale, then he can keep living in his delusion. What she really wants to know though, is what his life was as a slave.

"But uhm, how did my father find you?" Lucy asks.

Natsu folds his arms, squeezing his eyes shut as he thinks deeply. "He didn't," he says. "Some lady did. She was real nice, you know. Had blonde hair just like you. She took me to the castle. That's when I met Happy, too."

"Oh? I thought Happy mentioned you two have been together all your life."

Natsu smiles at her. "For him, yeah! I met him when he was just a wee little egg. He hatched after I heated it with my fire for a while. Actually, at first I thought it would just make a very yummy meal ... but don't tell Happy that!"

Lucy suddenly has this image of Natsu in her head as a mother hen, sitting on top of her eggs and brooding them. And that he tried to make lunch out of Happy afterwards. It's a ridiculous image, and she chortles at it. Natsu glares at her, sticking his nose up in pride.

"Please don't tell me you tried to eat Happy ..." Lucy says, amused.

"I didn't!" Natsu says. "Well I mean, he wasn't a _chicken_, so of course I didn't eat him."

"So you would have if he _were_ a chicken? Oh this is good, I'll have to tell him that." Lucy waves at the door. "Oh look, there he is!" she lies.

Natsu immediately pushes her up against the tree and covers his mouth with his hand. "Shh! Don't tell him! Not a word!"

Lucy laughs this time, the sound being subdued by Natsu's warm hand. That boy is always so damn warm—do all boys have a naturally higher body temperature than girls? She eventually bites his thumb, to which Natsu shrieks and pulls away, looking at Lucy with accusing eyes. Lucy shrugs, but then smirks at him. Natsu can be such a childish idiot sometimes, but Lucy has to admit it definitely cheers up her boring days.

Perhaps one day she'll get the full story of Natsu's past.

**oOo**

"You're doing great!" Lucy cheers Happy on.

The blue cat is hovering mid-air in front of the cherry blossom tree, his nails clawing away at the trunk, right below Lucy's and Natsu's name. Natsu has taught Happy how to write his own name when they were spending time together on the first floor. Lucy has absolutely no idea how Natsu managed to do this, but Happy has indeed learned how to spell 'Happy'. Lucy will have to remind herself to compliment Natsu as well for his progress in reading and writing. Finally, after about five minutes, Happy lowers himself down and proudly struts around to show off his work.

It looks like chicken scratch.

This makes Lucy remember that Happy came from an egg, and that Natsu did all the brooding. She promptly bursts out into laughter.

"I think she's gone mad," says Happy. "We can still make a run for it, she'll never know."

"Maybe the food's gone bad or something," says Natsu, looking strangely at Lucy's random behavior.

"Stop it you guys! I'm fine," Lucy says after she's finally stopped thinking of the chick and the mother hen. The image is just too funny though, it's hard not to chuckle when thinking about it. She turns to Happy and pats him on the head. "You did a good job little boy."

"Hey, I'm not little!" Happy protests.

"Hey, why don't I get pet by Lucy!" Natsu protests as well.

Then Lucy stands up straight and pats Natsu on his head. "You did a good job as well." Natsu smiles happily at being treated like a dog. She'll never understand his simplistic personality. "I'm very impressed by the both of you," Lucy says. Even if Happy's handwriting isn't legible, and it doesn't really look like much of anything, she's still proud of their effort. It's taken several weeks, but it's definitely progress.

Lucy looks at their names; Lucy, Natsu and Happy, all right below each other, though Happy was written down further, leaving a small gap between their names. Suddenly, she's overwhelmed by the feeling of belonging and acceptance. It's almost like ... they're a family. She misses her dad so much, but having these two with her, takes off a load from her shoulders. She doesn't feel alone anymore, and each day is actually getting more and more fun. Lucy wishes that she'd met them sooner, that she wouldn't have had to spend six years all by her lonesome, while they lurked in the shadows.

Now, she isn't alone anymore. She's got an idiot and a cat to keep her company, and right now, to Lucy, that is the best thing in the world. She hugs them both very tightly, prompting another remark by Happy that there's definitely something wrong with her food.

**oOo**

"A ... nd he valcut."

"Walked."

"And he walked ... to da ... w-w ..."

"And he walked to the well."

"Well!"

Lucy's eyes dart over towards Natsu, whose face is right next to her, as they're both reading from the same book, all huddled together. "You're doing really good!" she compliments him.

"Lucy, what's a well?" Natsu asks, completely serious.

"Huh, you don't know? It's a, uhm, it's this water source that's underground, and people dig holes to them to get the water out, and they call them a well."

"Oooh, I see! We've had those where I came from too!"

"What did you call them over there?"

"Holes!"

Lucy laughs. She can see how Natsu grew up to be so simplistic; his entire environment had been catering to simple things.

After their lesson for today is done, and Natsu has left the library, Lucy notices something about her tree. In fact, she's amazed she hadn't seen it sooner; someone had carved a new addition in the tree. It was the shape of a heart, surrounding Lucy's own name and Natsu's name. Lucy narrows her eyes at it; Happy definitely pulled off this prank. She'll have to scold him for it later—it's not like she can erase this. This is permanent, and that embarrasses her more than it should.

She really needs to stop reading fairy tales, it's messing with her mind.

**oOo**

"I didn't do it," Happy lies. Lucy can tell he's lying because one, Natsu doesn't even know what a heart is after she confronted him, and two, Happy always looks down at his feet whenever he's lying. "Maybe the tree fairies did it."

"Tree fairies don't exist," says Lucy.

"But you believe dragons do!? What a hypocrite."

Lucy's cheeks flash with pink. "I-I'm not going to be lectured by a blue cat! Now apologize for vandalizing that tree. It didn't deserve that."

"But doesn't it look prettier that way?" Happy says. "It means you love each other!"

This time Lucy's cheeks turn red, and stays red for a long time. "I-I don't! Happy, you can't just suddenly say that! That's inappropriate."

Happy wobbles on his feet. "But it's like ... like we're a big family. You're like the mother."

Lucy blinks at him and is a bit taken aback. "... And what, Natsu is the father?"

"Yeah!" Happy's tail sways excitedly. "I've never had a family before ..."

Lucy heart sinks at Happy's words. She can't possibly stay mad at him when he says it like this, because Lucy hasn't had a family in years either, and Happy hasn't ever had one. He was born and raised with Natsu only. So Lucy sinks down to her knees and gently pats him on the head.

"Alright, it can stay."

**oOo**

Things had almost gotten into a routine. It's been three months since that fateful encounter due to a mishap with the dumbwaiter, and Lucy's been spending each day with Natsu and Happy. Some things didn't change—Lucy would still get meals three times a day (she'd see Natsu politely excuse himself as he went to prepare it, then came right back up and ate the meal with her), and she'd still get some origami. She had gotten into the habit of making requests that Natsu could make for her. It had started when he'd personally asked her if she'd wanted anything in particular, and now she's been making requests on her own volition. Her collection has been growing, its latest entry a copy of the cherry blossom tree in the library, whose pink petals had finally disappeared and turned into wonderful lush green leaves.

Natsu's progress in learning how to read and write has gotten tremendously better. He has finally learned all the letters of the alphabet (Lucy is glad to have that over with), and is now able to read all three letter words he comes across. Bigger words still pose a problem, but at least he remembers his own name now. When Natsu and Happy aren't on the second floor, Natsu tells Happy what he learned from Lucy, and in turn, teaches him a bit how to read and write as well.

Lucy had offered to teach him as well, but the cat said he liked it more when Natsu did it, and didn't think she'd be a good teacher anyway.

Needless to say, Happy had to spend all day to wash the pink dye from his fur that Lucy conjured.

When Lucy isn't busy entertaining Happy, or teaching Natsu, she's practicing her magic. Somehow, with Natsu around, she feels more energized to work harder. If he can learn how to read, she can learn to be better at magic. Lately she's been interested in barrier magic—like the one that's cast on the second floor, keeping her trapped. These spells take a while to write, but they can be very specific. Lucy wagers that this castle has a spell that disallows her—and only her—to never stray outside of the barrier. Everyone else is free to come and go.

At first Lucy wonders why they couldn't have done a barrier for the entire castle, and prevented people from coming _in_, when she realized this wasn't actually possible. Barriers work on specific conditions (i.e. don't let people with blond hair leave), and they don't work as an actual barrier ... but more like a cage. Once inside, the barrier can never let you leave, but it can't prevent people from getting in.

The section about breaking one of these barrier spells was long and technical—Lucy doesn't even need to finish reading it to know it's way too advanced for her. She could never hope to break her own barrier to go outside. Only the original magician could take it down, or someone who's highly advanced in magic.

Someone like her mother perhaps.

Lucy shakes her head; she shouldn't be thinking of her mother. She's not here anymore, and never will be again. Instead, Lucy should think positive, and that she might get to see her dad sometime in the future.

Lucy had tried to pry out more information out of Natsu, about her father, the state of affairs, if anyone's gotten close to cracking her curse, but Natsu doesn't know much more than her. They hadn't told him many details about how it happened—simply told him there's a princess who couldn't be around humans, and that he needed to protect her. Afterwards, he's only had contact with someone from the castle twice in all these years. They were letters that Happy picked up at the nearest town.

Except Natsu and Happy couldn't read, so they threw it away.

Lucy had wanted to slap the both of them when she heard this, but Natsu says the last letter was three years ago, and they couldn't possibly get it back now. But she couldn't stop thinking about it; what if they were letters from her father to her? What if they found a cure for her curse!? Happy managed to calm her down after he said that if someone did find a cure, they'd be coming over with trumpets blaring and all—they wouldn't send a letter. Lucy concurred; that does seem plausible.

Doesn't make her fret over it any less though, she's super curious about what it said.

So other than the occasional prank by Happy (he still likes to move things around when he's invisible) or Natsu (who thinks fart jokes are the greatest thing in the world), this was pretty much Lucy's new life. She's grown accustomed to it, rising early in the morning, and going to bed late at night.

The one thing that seems a bit off to her, is the lack of knights trying to 'save' her again. She hasn't seen one in forever, not since that day three months ago. Lucy doesn't think too much about it; it's better they leave her alone, but it does make her wary when she hasn't seen anyone in a while. It makes her think they're plotting something. The knights so far had all been rather ... of low intelligence. Kind of like Natsu, actually. If a smart one happened to come along, Lucy might actually be in trouble, because who would fight them off? Natsu isn't smart enough, and while he does seem to be in the possession of brute strength, this wouldn't matter much in a planned ambush.

And it's not like she believes the dragon to be real anymore. Lucy has finally given up on the idea that there's a dragon living in her castle. Gone are her fantasies of a green scaled dragon patrolling the first floor and blasting knights away. She'd let her imagination gone wild, she projected her wishes and desires on something that didn't even exist. She so badly wanted to be protected by a dragon, but he was never real in the first place. All of the things she attributed to the dragon, were done by either Natsu or Happy.

Not that she believes Natsu is a 'dragon'. After spending these three months with him, she's more than convinced he isn't. He seems to have an active imagination, that's all. It's not like Lucy stayed sane all these years either, she can imagine that Natsu started to conjure up fantasies about his own life to get through the day, because reality just wasn't worth facing. No, Natsu isn't some dragon, he's just a boy. A boy immune to her curse. Or perhaps it's the other way around, perhaps Lucy is immune to Natsu.

However, even if she's convinced Natsu is a regular boy, this still doesn't explain the flames that she saw.

Lucy chalks it up to them being illusions, or perhaps even delusions.

"Lucy!"

Lucy snaps out of her thoughts and looks up from her book. She'd been spacing out a bit, and hadn't noticed that Natsu had come into the library for another session.

"You didn't eat lunch, not hungry?" Natsu asks as he sits down next to her. Happy comes flying in right behind them, and ends up sitting on top of a very large bookcase, folding 'birdies' as Natsu dubs them, and throwing them down. Lucy will have to tell him to clean up after himself later.

"Yeah uhm, I was just thinking. Sorry. Didn't notice the time."

"Haha, you airhead!"

Lucy pouts at him; doesn't Natsu realize half the things he says are actually insults? But he says it with such a happy face ... "Anyways, I'll eat dinner later. Let's start where we left off yesterday."

"Lucy, open the windows please! I wanna throw out the birdies," Happy asks. He's still happily perched on the bookcase, apparently excited about testing out how far his paper birdies will fly.

"Alright, but you can only throw out one!" Lucy warns him. She doesn't want him littering the place.

Happy sighs. "_Fine._ Just one. Open it, open it!"

Lucy rolls her eyes, but quickly commands the window behind her to open. The sudden breeze accompanying it turns the pages of her book, causing Natsu to suddenly read an entirely different sentence, and he doesn't even notice. No matter what Lucy may think of his intelligence, Lucy's got to hand it to him; he's got quite the concentration. He seems to put every ounce of concentration he's got in his reading, forgetting everything else around him. But then suddenly, he raises his head and stares at Lucy. Lucy looks back at him, wondering what he's doing. Then he _sniffs_ her hair.

"W-what are you doing!?" Lucy asks bewildered.

"You smell different," says Natsu. He's got a complete serious look on his face. "Kinda like a flower."

"Oh ..." Lucy shyly brushes her blonde hair behind her ear. "I found a spell that scents my shampoo with lavender ... that's probably what you're smelling." She's amazed Natsu noticed it! And kind of happy, too.

"It stinks!" Scratch that about being happy.

"Well I didn't ask for _your_ opinion!" Lucy barks at him. "Not like I wanted to smell nice or something. Especially not for you." Right as she says that, a paper flies right above Lucy's head, which pisses her off even more, and she gives Happy the death glare.

"No I mean, it makes it hard to smell you," says Natsu. He leans in closer again, this time taking a lock of her hair and pressing it up to his nose. That's gross!

"Stop that!" Lucy hastily yanks her hair out of his hand and reminds herself never to use lavender scented shampoo again. It makes Natsu turn even weirder than normal.

"Yeah, definitely stinks." Natsu nods his head, and Lucy glares at him. "You definitely smell better than some flower." _Aaand_ Lucy is somehow undeniably happy again, her flushed cheeks betraying her feelings. Wait, she smells better? What does that even mean? "Don't use it again, I use scents to know where you are, you know. If I can't smell you, I can't find you."

"W-what kind of logic is that? And that's creepy that you smell me to find out where I am! Are you some kind of dog!?" Lucy asks. She feels weird with how close Natsu still is, and how he's still sort of sniffing the air around her, and he had just outright said that she smells better than a flower. It's just _weird_. Lucy doesn't know how to handle boys ... especially weird odd boys with pink hair. He definitely doesn't understand the concept of personal space.

"_Dra-gon._ I'm a dragon!" says Natsu exasperatedly. "Dragons got really good noses!"

"No, no, a dog makes much more sense. I mean, anyone who thinks it's a great idea to bash their head open against a rock can't be anything else other than a dog."

"T-that happened once! And you weren't even there!" This time it's Natsu whose cheeks match the colour of his hair. "Anyway, I'm no stupid dog—I'm a dragon! Dragon! Arr!" He throws his hands up in the air, like they're claws and he's preying on her. "Grr, I'm an awesome dragon feared by all!"

"Whatever makes you sleep at night, doggy boy." Lucy sticks her tongue out at him. She enjoys getting back at him whenever she can, considering the many times he's insulted her, or embarrassed her, or pulled his stupid pranks on her. Yup, payback time.

"Seriously, how many times do I have to te—"

Natsu's voice is cut off as something pierces through the open window at lightning speed, and the force of it causing Lucy to fall off the couch. Suddenly, her throat starts to close up, and she can barely register what happened. But then she sees it; a large metal claw hooked around the base of her tree, with a rope attached to it that lead right outside of the window.

"No, our names!" Lucy says. She sees that the metal claw had dug itself into the bark, right where all of their names where. It had destroyed it. And the sight of that alone, hurts more than her burning throat. She starts to cough this time, as the familiar sense of her breath being taken away from her takes over her once more.

"Happy, take her out of here!" Natsu commands as he stands in the window frame, looking down.

"Aye!" Happy says, and he flies down towards the ground and scoops Lucy up, then carries her out of the library.

The last thing she sees, is Natsu jumping down from the window.

"No!" she cries out. "Natsu! H-he—_cough_—jumped! No, turn back Happy, we have to see if he's okay!" The further away they are from the library, the better Lucy can breathe again.

Whoever was there, they mustn't be that close to the castle, but they had definitely managed to sneak up on them. Regardless—Lucy had to go back and see if Natsu was okay! No way could he have gotten away unscratched from a fall of that height. There's fear instilled in the bottom of her stomach, and it's not her own life she's fearing, it's Natsu's. His stupidity could get him killed!

Finally Happy puts Lucy down now that they're on the other side of the castle. "Lucy, wait here, don't go anywhere! I'll be right back, Natsu needs me!" And with that, the little cat flies away again.

Like hell will she wait right there! Screw being a good princess and listening to commands when the boy whom was the closest thing she had to a family right now had just jumped out of a two-floor high castle.

Lucy gives chase; running after Happy who didn't seem to notice she was following him. Unfortunately, Happy is much faster than her (damn those wings!), so Lucy trails behind. It's actually quite a huge walk from one end of the castle to the other end, so it takes her a bit before she's nearing the library again. She can feel her throat start to tingle the closer she gets, until it's burning and choking her up. No, she has to prevail, she has to see if Natsu was alright! She runs through the open doors, and promptly drops down to her knees from both shock, and the tight hold on her throat.

She gasps for air, but this time she seriously cannot breathe anymore, because there's a human not even five foot away from her. There's _two_ knights in her library, swords drawn and armour clad, they were dancing around the tree, cowering away from ...

Natsu.

Lucy doesn't know whether these are illusions, or she's delusional from the lack of oxygen, but there he is, standing, no—_perched_ atop of the bookcase Happy was sitting on earlier like he's some kind of dangerous animal, and he's covered in fire. And scales. And fire. Fire everywhere. He's a literal walking ball of fire. His skin is completely replaced with shiny scales that glow up orange and yellow and then back to a deep red, ever changing their colours. Even his hair seems to be changing colours. She sees ashes fall down from him, and they float up in the air, burning like little magical wisps. His clothes remain untouched, but they glow red from the fire.

Lucy continues to gape for air, her entire world spinning for her. It's so damn painful, and she can't even manage to utter a word.

Natsu finally notices Lucy, and she sees his cat-like amber eyes stare at her in shock. He then pounces down onto one of the knights with ease, grabbing the man by his shoulders and flinging him out of the window with enormous strength. The second knight swings his sword at Natsu, but he _punches_ it away without a flinch. He raises his fist, which is covered in a huge flame, and slams it into the knight's helmet. The knight goes _flying_ through the wall, breaking it into pieces. Natsu jumps right after him, with Happy following.

That's how they all left Lucy alone in the library. But she could breathe again—the knights were far enough to take in a small amount of oxygen. Enough to keep herself from losing consciousness. She manages to pick herself up again, and stagger over towards the window to see what's going on. Finally pressed up against the barrier, Lucy looks down.

One of the knights seemed to be unconscious, and Happy had taken him by his shoulder and tries to carry him away, but the armour is too heavy for the poor cat, so he ends up dragging him.

The other knight is limping, but he's upright, and he's pointing his sword at Natsu.

Natsu ...

Lucy can't take her eyes off of him. His scales shine and reflect light everywhere, his hair is swaying upright from the heatwaves that his flames create, and Lucy sees just how much stronger he is like this. He then starts to spew _fire_ from his mouth. It's a huge tidal wave of flames—exactly like the one she had seen several years ago. But she'd never seen _this_ before. Natsu creating those flames, Natsu fighting those knights, Natsu moving around with the agility of a cat, and having the strength of an ox. This is not the pink haired boy she came to know anymore.

Natsu manages to land one direct hit on the knight's chest, and sends him into the sky, flying across the dense forest with a speed much greater than her spell Limione could ever achieve. She sees Happy return, and he flies right back up towards the window. Natsu grabs a hold of the rope that's tied to a tree from the forest, with the other end being tied around _her_ tree, and sets it on fire. Within seconds, the entire rope has burned to ashes, and the metal claw falls to the ground as well. Happy enters the library again, not saying a word, but it's not like Lucy can manage to say anything herself either.

Natsu is still down there, fire blazing around him, though it seems to be slowly disappearing. He braces himself against the ground, spreading his legs, and then launches himself upwards like a cat, shooting up high in the sky with a single jump. He easily reaches the second floor, and climbs in through the window. He holds onto the damaged post, but the fire on his skin doesn't burn the wood at all. He looks at Lucy, and she doesn't recognize those amber eyes at all. The flames finally subdue, and slowly, one by one, his shiny red scales starts peeling away from him, revealing his normal skin as they fall onto the ground and disappear into tiny flames. His amber eyes turn back to his emerald coloured ones, and the slit-shaped pupils morph into circles. His pink hair falls back into his eyes where it belongs. He blinks at her, and she blinks back. He doesn't have a single scratch on his body. Not a one.

Finally all of his scales have peeled away, and there's not a trace of them to be found anymore. There's not a trace of anything at all, like it never happened.

Natsu holds his hand out to her. "Are you okay?" he asks. He's back to normal again. He's back to being the pink haired boy.

But now, Lucy knows.

That Natsu has always been her dragon guardian.


End file.
